Bye-Bye Dolly Gray

About The Author

Antony “Tony” O’Brien (1946 - ) served in the Australian Army both in-country and overseas after graduating from OCS Portsea. He has a life-long connection with north-eastern Victoria and published a history (2005) on that region, Shenanigans on the Ovens Goldfields, about its early days of gold, social conflicts and tensions in the debates around land settlement. He researched a history on the prelude to the Kelly Gang Outbreak, “Awaiting Ned Kelly” and holds a Master of Arts in History from Deakin University.

O’Brien has a long, ongoing connection with South Africa having travelled into that country on numerous occasions whilst researching this book. He has a hunter’s eye for detail, a soldier’s appreciation of ground, a bushman’s ability to tell a yarn; all of which are melded with an historian’s understanding of events and these traits empower his powerful novel.

© Tony O’Brien’s collection

Tony O’Brien’s interest in the Boer War came from hearing stories from ‘old timers’ who served with Australian units during the war and their troubled conversations around farm burning and stock destruction. In 1969, O’Brien happened to sit beside one of the last Australian Boer War ‘old timers’ who on his death-bed was still troubled by his farm burning in South Africa. Using that unresolved contradiction around farm burning, O’Brien captured those historical incidents in the fictional novel, ‘Bye-Bye Dolly Gray’, and gave tension to the events with Patrick McCarthy’s conflict of conscience. O’Brien travelled into to South Africa on numerous occasions and trekked from top to bottom and east to west. In researching ‘Bye-Bye Dolly Gray’, he walked over and studied many Boer War battlefields and locations ensuring he captured the feel of the terrain for this book.

This is O’Brien’s first novel. He completed TAFE studies in novel writing, desktop publishing, design and production and small press publishing, all of which assisted in the creation of his strange and powerful tale set against a back drop of war and conflict. He enjoys photography and despite all the recent innovations with modern digital photography, he still maintains and uses his 35mm Pentaxs and Leica and his medium format Mamyias, alongside his digital Pentax cameras. The author enjoys reading, photography, history and the bush.

O’Brien worked several powerful devices into his novel. First, in making the hero, Patrick McCarthy, O’Brien’s ‘mythical’ grandfather, the story assumes a new immediacy, which imparts a sense of non-fiction. Second, the novel contains many [fictional] maps and sketches from Patrick’s [fictional] War Journal, which further imparts a non-fiction reality to the novel. Third, O’Brien’s research and historian’s understanding of the Boer War, coupled with his knowledge of tactics, small arms and the Australian and South African topographies, hurl the reader from a fictional novel into a near non-fiction experience. These devices, skillfully utilized in ‘Bye-Bye Dolly Gray’, blur the line between what is factual and what is fictional. Combined these techniques make a dynamic reading experience. But be warned though this is book for men and women, its not for the feint hearted; initially it is a boys only adventure, then it switches to a challenging and confrontational experience of war and sordid conflict. Through-out it is intermingled with Australian humour, a love story, an Australian perspective of right and wrong and a world and a people now past.

O’Brien has four children.

Patrick's drawing of his spurs
worn in South Africa
© Tony O’Brien’s collection

Editor's Note (Taken from the Novel, p.7)

As a 9 year old, the Australian Tony O'Brien encountered a story in his school reader, of a wild battle on a Natal hill called Spion Kop. Though living in Australia, the lad resolved to find and climb that mountain. Arriving home, that same day, he met his grandfather, Patrick McCarthy, or as those grand-children called him, Pa-Pato, on a regular visit from his Glenrowan farm in Victoria. Young O'Brien proclaimed he would climb Spion Kop.

His grandfather gasped;

'I was there that day.'

Tears welled in Patrick's tired blue eyes. That was the beginning of their special relationship.

This is Patrick McCarthy's story based on his diary entries, his maps and his photos taken at the Boer War and long conversations with his grandson. Patrick spoke fluent Afrikaans. As a teenager, O'Brien's doubted his grandfather's attitudes and his insights, but never his skill with guns or horses. O'Brien's perceptions of his grandfather changed, once he realised Patrick McCarthy was the last Australian wild colonial boy.

In 1980, O'Brien first arrived in South Africa and climbed Spion Kop. He met descendants of Australian servicemen who returned to South Africa after the Boer War, or who were struck off at the end of their service and remained in-country. O'Brien retraced Patrick's footsteps over many battlefields and visited the farms of his stories. He prayed over graves of soldiers, men, women and boys his grandfather knew. Some Patrick had buried. Some he....well, they are part of the story. Like his grandfather, O'Brien rode the last of the steam trains in South Africa and slept in the veld. Again, in 2002, O'Brien returned and stood with me, at the grave of 'Breaker' Morant and Handcock, on the morning of the centenary of their execution. Like South Africa's steam locomotives, many of the graves O'Brien visited in 1980/81 had vanished by 2002.

O'Brien used his grandfather's terminology. Words like Kaffir, Traps, hobyahs, Afrikander are obsolete. The first is a 'put-down'; the last of a breed of ox. He used pounds shillings and pence and the defunct measurements of miles and retained the spelling of the day for places like Naaupoort, now Noupoort and veldt, now veld. Patrick had a way with words and O'Brien recaptured his wonderful voice. Scanning Patrick's journal maps and photos into the text ensured his strong personality emerged from his strange story.

The Boer War 1899 - 1902 was a war of deceit. Despite claims of the extension of the franchise, betterment of the coloured races and corruption of the Boers, they were only pretexts for the expansion of the empire and control of resources. Patrick McCarthy opposed all notions of empire, as did my Boer grandfather. This is the Australian trooper, Patrick McCarthy's story; of the adventure of his triumphant march to Pretoria followed by his tormented confrontation with the reality of war.

Patrick Overberg
Editor
Cape Town

Patrick McCarthy and his invented Family History.... read more

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