G'day all & Ian Kirk,

The song Shanty by the Way was collected (post W.W.II) in New Zealand by Australian researcher Dr Percy Jones. He had it from a man who had learned it from two old gold diggers who, in turn, learned it from an Australian miner working on NZ's West Coast in the last century.

The song itself is a folk-processed version of a poem by E. J. Overbury - printed in the Creswick and Clunes Advertiser in the 1860s. Creswick and Clunes are towns in Victoria, just north of the Ballara(a)t gold fields.

BTW: The Thomas Spencer I mentioned earlier was a later, rather more popular Australian poet whose work also found its way into song form. His most popular poem would be How MacDougal Topped the Score ... an hilarious account of a most irregular country cricket match>.

Regards,

Bob Bolton