Ernest O'Ferrall

Who was Ernest O'Ferrall?

Ernest Francis "Kodak" O'Ferrall was a popular Australian poet and short story writer born in East Melbourne.

He contributed numerous articles, stories and poems to The Bulletin from 1901 and The Lone Hand, often under the pseudonym "Kodak". He commenced writing as a young single man, working in a bicycle shop then for the International Harvester Company, and living in a series of boarding-houses, which formed the basis of many of his stories.

His stories were mostly ridiculous comic observations of working-class city life, though he could write tenderly and observantly, especially on Irish subjects. Unlike contemporaries such as Henry Lawson, he seldom wrote of bush life or of romance. His most famous story is The Lobster and the Lioness of a drunken boarding-house lodger who mistakes a runaway lioness for a large shaggy dog.

An admirer of his writing was Nettie Palmer, who arranged for The Melbourne Pioneer Players, with which she was associated, to stage a play he wrote.

His most famous poem was Chunda Loo of A Kim Foo, illustrated by Norman Lindsay and used in advertisements for "Cobra" boot polish.