I am sitting here in France at our place La Jeusseliniere after having had a most successful week with Harvey Andrews doing a course on songwriting. Harvey told us about the Mudcat café and having looked at the site, and finding it most interesting and informative, I came across the dialogue that was going on about the Dorothy Hewitt poem 'Sailor Home from the Sea'. This poem is very dear to my heart as it was the first tune that I ever wrote for a poem and this was back in about 1964. I know that Chris Kempster has written a great tune as well and it was Chris that had inspired many people to write tunes to Henry Lawson poems, myself included. So the reason that I wrote my tune to this was, and I am delving back through the mists of time. I believe that it was Mike Leydon who wrote the first tune to Sailor Home from the Sea, and by sheer coincidence it was similar to the tune written by Ewan McColl and Peggy Seeger' s'The Fireman's not for Me', was it Peggy Seeger or Ewan McColl that wrote the tune? Anyway people thought that Mike had copied that tune so they stopped singing it. I thought it was a great love poem so I wrote my tune for it. Incidentally Mike Leydon wrote another good tune to another of Dorothy's poems " Weevils In The Flour ". Back in the 1960's I met Dorothy in Sydney and later on wrote to her asking her permission to put my tune to her poem, she kindly consented and I believe that I have the letter somewhere. While on tour in America in the mid 1990's I bumped into Dorothy and Merv at Penn State University as she was on a literature tour of some of the universities and I was doing a concert at the same university for their Australian Studies section. I can well remember being amazed to see the sign saying "This way to the Dorothy Hewitt Lecture",and her being equally surprised to see myself. My wife Dan and I went to see both Dorothy and Merv in their house in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney about three years ago,sadly Merv had had to go to the dentist so we missed him. Dorothy said that she approved of my tune which I took as a great compliment. Incidently Merv wrote a great song " Cane Killed Able " which Declan Affley did such a good job on. One other point I should mention, I well remember singing my tune to Sailor Home From The Sea into Eddie Furey's tape recorder circa late 1960's and then in the early '70's being on tour in Germany and staying at Willy Schwenken's house. Willy made records of the vinyl variety and also had an extensive collection, while browsing through some of these I saw that there was a recording of the Furey's live concert at some hall. One of the tracks was I think Cock of The North so being curious I played that track, sure enough it was Sailor Home From The Sea having been, as Bob Bolton so accurately describes as "being painted green" something about having learnt the song from their grandmother and it was all about gun running, to be honest I am not too sure about this bit being on the actual record but I am sure that I have heard them introduce it this way . One thing I am sure of is that each time I have seen Eddie and asked him about this he has always had a pressing engagement in a different direction.