John Arthur Barry was a journalist

Journalist

A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

 and author

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

.

Barry was born in Torquay

Torquay

Torquay is a town in the unitary authority area of Torbay and ceremonial county of Devon, England. It lies south of Exeter along the A380 on the north of Torbay, north-east of Plymouth and adjoins the neighbouring town of Paignton on the west of the bay. Torquay’s population of 63,998 during the...

, Devon

Devon

Devon is a large county in southwestern England. The county is sometimes referred to as Devonshire, although the term is rarely used inside the county itself as the county has never been officially "shired", it often indicates a traditional or historical context.The county shares borders with...

shire, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, 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

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

 in the 1870s, and after working in Queensland

Queensland

Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...

 at the gold diggings, spent some years as a drover

Drover (Australian)

A drover in Australia is a person, typically an experienced stockman, who moves livestock, usually sheep or cattle, "on the hoof" over long distances. Reasons for droving may include: delivering animals to a new owner's property, taking animals to market, or moving animals during a drought in...

, boundary rider

Boundary rider

A boundary rider is a term used in the Australian Football League as well as other field sports to denote a commentator who works from the sidelines of the field or 'boundary'...

 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 Sydney Mail

The Sydney Mail was an Australian magazine published weekly in Sydney. The weekly edition of The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper, it ran from 1860 to 1938....

, The Queenslander

The Queenslander

The Queenslander was the weekly summary and literary edition of the 'Brisbane Courier' , since the 1850s the leading journal in the colony later federal state of Queensland...

, the Town and Country Journal, the Pall Mall Gazette

Pall Mall Gazette

The Pall Mall Gazette was an evening newspaper founded in London on 7 February 1865 by George Murray Smith; its first editor was Frederick Greenwood...

, 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

Rudyard Kipling

Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...

 who wrote an introductory poem for the volume.

Barry returned to Australia after about six months in England and joined the staff of the Sydney Evening News, another collection of his stories was published, In the Great Deep: Tales of the Sea (1896). This was followed by two novels, The Luck of the Native Born (1898), and A Son of the Sea (1899). Three collections of short stories followed, Against the Tides of Fate (1899), Red Lion and Blue Star (1902), and Sea Yarns (1910). South Sea Shipmates, a sea story, was published posthumously in 1914. Barry died in Sydney

Sydney

Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...

on 23 September 1911 of chronic myocarditis.