People Australia

Harry Reade (1927-1998) cartoonist, author and Communist

Birth: 17 November 1927, near Dimboola, Victoria, son of Tom Henry Reade, blacksmith and ex-IWW activist. Marriages: (1) details unknown. (2) 1965 in Moscow, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, to Elga?, a Russian Librarian. Death: 7 May 1998 at Girvan, New South Wales. 

• Left by his mother at the age of three, his upbringing was entrusted to his father. He was taken ‘on the wallaby’ by his father during the Great Depression, travelling throughout Victoria in search of work, food and shelter and living for a time in a bag humpy at Wangaratta.
• His itinerant experience reportedly provided the inspiration for Darcy Niland's novel, The Shiralee. He had only four years of schooling, but developed a keen interest in literature and radical thought by reading his father's few books, particularly the work of anarchist Peter Kropotkin. He was also influenced by the work of Thomas Paine.
• At the age of seven he was distributing radical literature and posting equal pay posters in Wangaratta, Victoria, and earning money selling evening newspapers.
• Went to work in a Melbourne foundry aged 13. Joined the Eureka Youth League aged 16 and the Communist Party of Australia aged 17.
• Subsequently associated with many unions, including the Ironworkers, Waterside Workers’ Union, Australian Workers’ Union and the Painters and Decorators Union.
• Cartooned for several union journals.
• During the 1940s he worked as canecutter in Queensland. At various times he also worked as a seaman, fruit picker, rabbiter, shark fisherman and boatbuilder.
• Moved to Newcastle, New South Wales, after World War II. Worked at Broken Hill Pty Co’s naphthalene plant; stood as union delegate and sought to establish a shop committee. In 1949 he narrowly survived an explosion and fire at a naphthalene plant. He was retrenched as a result of the 1949 coal strike; he organised in support of striking miners.
• Moved to Sydney about 1950. Worked as a waterside worker. Become active in “the Push”, drawing political cartoons for several publications, including The Bulletin.
• To Cuba in 1960, via Peru and Panama; met Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, making animated films on first aid and ecologically sound farming practices; tried unsuccessfully to persuade Cubans to adopt Australian sugar cane cutting methods. Was a member of the Citizens Militia which defeated the US Central Intelligence Agency-backed Bay of Pigs invasion. In 1963 he was named by The Saturday Evening Post as typical of the hard-core communists imported by Castro to bolster his tottering regime.
• To Moscow, where he married his second wife, whom he had first met in Havana. In the USSR he translated Nikita Khruschev's last speech into English.
• To Canada, working as a film reviewer on the Montreal Star; and Mexico, lecturing with Ivan Illich.
• Returned to Australia in 1969, after separating from his second wife. In the 1970s he worked as a journalist in Sydney and Brisbane, as a columnist and feature writer for the Sunday Australian and The Australian.
• Subsequently he became a full-time writer, writing two children's books and nine plays, including the controversial prize-winning play, The Execution of Steele Rudd. Several plays were subsequently workshopped at the national Playwrights Conference, Canberra.
• In the 1990s he lived in Glebe, Sydney. For a time was writer-in-residence at the Harold Park Hotel. He returned to Cuba in 1991 as Castro's guest at Bay of Pigs anniversary celebrations, where there was a retrospective of his cartoons and animated films.
• Spent his last years in Queensland, cruising in a small catamaran which he built himself, and writing.
• Cause of death: cancer (from death notice).
• Author of How Many Ropes on a Boat?; White Fellers Are Like Traffic Lights (children's books); The Naked Gun, Bucks Night at Suzy's Place, You'll Die Laughing, The Execution of Steele Rudd (plays); An Elephant Charging My Chookhouse (1987). 

Sources
Sydney Morning Herald, 16 May 1998, p 122; Australian, 29 May 1998; G. Carey, Australian Story, ABC Books, 1997: Max Bannah, Wharfie animator; Harry Reade, the Sydney waterfront and the Cuban revolution (2021).