John Arthur Barry

John Arthur Barry (1850 – 23 September 1911) was a journalist and author. Barry was born in Torquay, Devonshire, England, in 1850. His parents died when he was young, and he went to sea at 13 after persuading his guardian and was in the merchant service for 12 years. Leaving with a first mate's certificate, Barry came to Australia in the 1870s, and after working in Queensland at the gold diggings, spent some years as a drover, boundary rider and station manager. He returned to shipboard life around 1877 along the east coast of Australia for about two years. Then he returned to the land as an overseer and station manager. He began writing for the press and contributed stories to The Australasian, The Sydney Mail, The Queenslander, the Town and Country Journal, the Pall Mall Gazette, and others. In 1893 he spent a holiday in England and published a collection of his stories, Steve Brown's Bunyip and Other Stories. He had become acquainted with Rudyard Kipling who wrote an introductory poem for the volume.