This letter is from my personal collection. As I mentioned Charles Barrett as being a friend of Idriess in my last post on the Literary World of Idriess, I thought I would reproduce this letter here (Barrett includes the line, "Like all your other friends" in this letter). It is typed, but signed personally by Charles Barrett and written to "Jack": when he signed a copy of his Isles of the Sun book for Idriess, he addressed it more formally to "Ion Idriess!"

Herald Office is presumably the office of the Melbourne Herald, forerunner of the Herald Sun and the Editor would be of that newspaper, perhaps one and the same as Percy Jenkin, the Magazine Editor mentioned in the letter.

Perhaps Barrett was working in some capacity for the Herald, maybe helping produce articles for its magazine (he wrote articles for Walkabout magazine also: at least one in 1937 to my knowledge).

Percy B Jenkin was a noted journalist who worked at a number of papers. He became chief-of-staff at the Herald and also became Chief Censor for the Commonwealth at the start of the war: but died not long after at the age of 45 on 7th September 1941 [from a Trove obituary article].

Barrett mentions "the pearlers". Of course Forty Fathoms Deep had come out earlier in 1937 and perhaps this reference is to something from that book or from Idriess' pearling knowledge. But the "the cutting of the article" most likely refers to a major article on pearling by Ion Idriess - Pearls - that a appeared in the October 1937 edition of Walkabout (Vol. 3 October 1st, 1937, No. 12, pp.13-18), including a front cover picture of a pearl diver as well as many others. "That photograph" may have been one also used in the Walkabout edition or that Idriess had left-over from his book or in preparation for the Walkabout article (and, it seems, a Herald article). Perhaps it is a little ironic that another article later in this same Walkabout issue was by a person named Pearl!

It is apparent Idriess shared photos with Barrett and others as well as using and requesting and sometimes losing photos from various people including Barrett.

Over the Range was Idriess' newest book in 1937: it had just come out in November (Feain and Aroney have it, incorrectly, as October!). Barrett thought it a "rattling good book" (I liked it myself, especially having lived in Derby and the Kimberleys), but it didn't sell a half-million copies! None-the-less it was a best seller, with a run of 10,000 copies for its first edition, and another 25,000 copies produced in reprints to 1945 (according to Feain and Aroney). And ETT Imprints are still reprinting it!