The only information I have is the brief note in Ron Edwards' 'The Big Book of Australian Folksong' Rigby 1976. He says the tune is 'Irish Mollie O' and the song was originally collected by Charles MacAlister and included in his 'Old Pioneering Days in the Sunny South' published in Goulburn in 1907. There was a gap in the 4-line structure after line 10. Evidently, John Meredith supplied lines (11 & 12) to fill the gap [The waves were high .../I would rather drown in New South Wales ...] and published them in 'Bushwacker Broadsides No 3'. Unfortunately, he did not indicate where he collected them. They differ from the rest of the song in that they mention NSW while elsewhere only Botany Bay is given as the destination. [Edwards p187].

An exhaustive study of transportation broadsides was published very recently in Australia. Hugh Anderson 'Farewell to Judges and Juries: The Broadside Ballad and Convict Transportation to Australia 1788-1868' Red Rooster Press 2000 [ISBN 0908247400]. It is a very expensive limited edition, published by the author, but you may be able to access it from a library. It should have something on 'Jim Jones'. Try contacting the Australian National Library.

--Stewie.