public as a cricket writer, although he was hardly known there in his musical capacity. The 1936–37 MCC tour of Australia under G.O. Allen was the occasion of Cardus's first visit to the country. During the tour he made, or consolidated, friendships with players and colleagues including C. B. Fry and Donald Bradman. Fry, a former England cricket captain, was a boyhood hero of Cardus, and was covering the Tests for the London Evening Standard. In Bradman, Cardus found a sophistication and sensitivity that other writers had failed to detect. When interviewed on his arrival in Australia, Cardus speculated how he would cope for the six months of the tour without music; he was touched when the following day music students in Perth gave him a private recital of music by Chopin and Hugo Wolf. During this tour Cardus wrote for The Herald in Melbourne, and broadcast about cricket on Australian radio. Cardus made a private visit to Australia from mid-January to mid-March 1938. When he joined The Herald in 1940, his initial brief was to cover a series of concerts conducted by Beecham for the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC). Daily contact between the two men during Beecham's time in Australia between June and October 1940 helped to consolidate their friendship. At the end of his tour Beecham tried to persuade Cardus to join him in sailing to America, asking, "Do you propose to stay in this barbarous country all your life?" Cardus insisted on remaining in Australia, but moved from Melbourne to Sydney. Concluding that he could not satisfactorily review concerts for an evening newspaper, he joined the staff of The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH). At first Cardus failed to adjust his expectations to the prevailing standard of music-making in Australia, which was not at that time comparable to the best on offer in Europe or America. He was accused of being "just one more sneering Pommy bastard come to hand down higher wisdom to the ignorant colonials." His biographer Christopher Brookes suggests that Cardus was applying critical standards "more appropriate to Salzburg than to Sydney". Over the next two years Cardus and the public slowly came to terms with each other, and by 1942 he was both popular and respected among Australians. For ABC Cardus presented a weekly hour-long programme, "The Enjoyment of Music", which enlarged the audience for classical music across the country. His topics included concert