G'day JennieG,

It generally starts:

T'was the month of December ...

and was written by Ken Cook for his musical play Stockade ... This was subsequently shot as a cheap 16mm movie - that got bumped up to 35mm print for general cinema release after some wowser complained about the brothel scene ... nobody would remember it otherwise!

(Ken Cook also wrote the successful play/film Wake in Fright ... and a wild beastie potboiler called Pig! [book] or Razorback (...?) [film].

In the currently running DT Study thread on (Jack) Donahoe Ballads I have skirted around The Drifting Smoke of the Mountains a highly innacurate "ballad" setting Donahoe on horseback ... in the Burragorang Valley. I would be pretty certain that Cook actually wrote that as well ... though he presented it as "collected".

Regards,

Bob Bolton