Ambrose Pratt

Who was Ambrose Pratt?

Ambrose Goddard Hesketh Pratt was an Australian writer born into a cultivated family in Forbes, New South Wales.

He was the third of seven children of Eustace Pratt, a well-connected physician fluent in Mandarin Chinese who had spent some time in India and China, and was a friend of Henry Parkes and Edmund Barton. Ambrose himself was brought up by an amah. His grandfather Henry Pratt, also a medical man, had in his later years become obsessed with Eastern religions and philosophies of India and Tibet. He was educated at St Ignatius' College, Riverview and Sydney Grammar School. He had private tutors for French, German, and the manly arts boxing, riding, fencing and shooting. After abandoning studies in Medicine, he took up Law. It was around this time that he was writing pro-labour articles for The Australian Worker. Once qualified as a solicitor, he rose to admission to the Supreme Court of New South Wales in 1897. But this life must not have suited him, as he left to follow a more adventurous existence, including work on a Pacific trading steamer and as a Queensland drover.

He travelled to England where he commenced writing novels and stories for magazines such as The Bulletin and The Lone Hand, and began what was to become a career in journalism with the Daily Mail which brought him back to Australia in 1905. He joined The Age as a journalist in 1905, gaining considerable influence, and was a member of the party with Prime Minister Andrew Fisher visiting the newly founded Union of South Africa for the opening of its parliament. In 1918, as a prominent protectionist in the tariff debate then raging, became founding editor and part-owner of the Australian Industrial and Mining Standard to 1927. He was involved in companies mining for tin in Malaya and Siam.