Edwin Gerard's family moved from South Australia to Kalgoorlie in 1896 at the height of the Western Australian gold rush. Gerard left school in 1912 to try a number of occupations, including work on the goldfields, before he moved to Sydney.
In 1914, with considerable anti-German feeling in Australia, he changed his name from Gerhard to Gerard. He enlisted in the AIF, serving at Gallipoli and in a number of World War I desert campaigns, and published two volumes of poetry about the war as well as contributing to journals such as the Bulletin and the Kia-Ora Cooee. This earned him the nickname 'the laureate of the light Horsemen'. After the war he turned to journalism and farming. He married in 1921 and farmed near Grenfell in New South Wales from then until he retired in 1957. He continued to contribute verse to the Bulletin, his verse reflecting his nostalgia for the rural life of his youth.
Gerard edited the Morvada Magazine, a short-lived Australian Light Horse journal which appeared in late 1919.
