G'day John,

Thanks, but I have access (from Don Brian, who performs with 'Backblocks', my music group) to the field recording you mention. This Jack Davies at the C of E home, St John's Park, New Town, Tasmania. (Incidentally, Patricia and I were married at St John's - where Pat's family traditionally married for the past century and a half.) I can't bring the collector to mind but I don't think it was Norm O'Connor.

Rex Whalan was collecting in Tasmania (~1961) along with an academic from the Uni. of Tas. and an ABC recording technician. Rex fell ill and returned to Sydney and the others kept at some leads - finding Jack Davies, an old whaler, at the home. Several of Jack's songs were recorded, including: 'The Waterwitch', a whaling song; another whaling song related to 'Lady Franklin's Lament'; and a version of 'Cyprus Brig' that I included in my posting.

The academic, working at academic pace, did not publish the songs until late 1965 - the month I left Sydney for Tasmania, in Tradition magazine, and I did not know (in early 1966) that an oral version was known when I found that an old bloke in Cygnet also knew a version of the song.

John Meredith corresponded with Vonny Helberg, who looked after old Mr. Wilson, after Ralph Pride and I were unable to get the song during a weekend stop at Cygnet, and she took down the words ... and his tune was lost when he died, at 91, a few months later.

What I wanted to do was to use Jack Davies' tune and edit the words to a listenable length for modern audiences - using as many of the words orally preserved in Tasmania as possible. The singing of the song ("around campfires in the interior") was mentioned in Tasmanian memoirs from 1854 and these two versions, from an ex-whaler and from a old boat-builder, show that it survided at least another century.

It is a good song; I can sing more comfortably about these convicts than I can sing about some of our bushrangers (even if I have closer connections to some of them!); I like the fact that this song comes out of some of the earliest traditions to leave a trace in colonial Australia and I seem to have a bit of fixation lately with the works of 'Frank the Poet' - all this is enough excuse for me!

Regards,

Bob Bolton