Aidan De Brune claimed to be a Canadian-born writer who was born (as Charles Francis Aidan De Brune) in St Mary's Montreal, Canada, in 1879, and to have later settled in Australia.
According to research by Colin Choat, very little of the biographical information that 'Aidan De Brune' supplied himself to newspapers was factual: De Brune was born Herbert Charles Cull, in Camberwell, London, in 1874, and arrived in Australia (Fremantle, Western Australia) on 23 May 1910, giving his profession as 'printer'.
However, Choat also notes that Cull 'did not simply use the name "Aidan de Brune" in his writing, but lived and died as Aidan de Brune, once he took on the name just before he set out on his walk around Australia.'
Choat's book, The Amateur Tramp: A Walk of Ten Thousand Miles Around Australia, includes a lengthy biographical study of De Brune.
In the 1920s and 1930s a number of his novels appeared in Australian newspapers as serials, and he also appears to have written serials specifically for publication in newspapers. In 1921 the Sydney Daily Mail sponsored him to walk around Australia, during the course of which he spent 6 weeks laid up at Burketown Hospital.
Sources:
Choat, Colin. The Amateur Tramp: A Walk of Ten Thousand Miles Around Australia. Project Gutenberg Australia, 2018. (https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks19/1901261h.html)
