G'day again Allan C,

I haven't heard back from Ralph Pride ... I think he's off to a festival way down south at Cobargo!

If you go to Mark Gregory's expanding collection of (usually 'oldest' in newspaper or similar publication ...) grabs gleaned from the National Library of Australis's TROVE OCR (Optical Character Recognition) harvest from early Australian periodicals, you will find a pretty standard set of words ... and a tune that 'sight-reads' for me as the one I would sing / play ( ... probably close to what's usually written ... !).

http://folkstream.com/065.html

I think Mark's Trove hit only says the song was first published in 'Banjo' Paterson's "Old Bush Songs" ... and Paterson may not have mentioned that it was composed by Louis Lavater ... or else that wasn't on the Trove OCR block Mark 'harvested'!

Anyway, it sight-reads quite well for me (not that I do much reading on 'old favourites' these days. I largely play from memory... and I generally sing and/or accompany in accord with the person singing or leading ...

Enjoy!

Regard BobB