G'day All,I'm not sure what an authentic version really is. (Won't get into that old line about "It is all folk music ... never seen no horse write a song ...")
Alan's version above includes the 2 traditional stanzas (#1 and #3)and chorus collected from 'Duke' Tritton, a traditional singer (~1885 - 1965), who spent most of his life doing rural work ... when we wasn't digging for gold. #4 was an additional verse that 'Duke' made up to make the song longer (he and a friend used to 'busk' in country towns when they were down on cash). Unfortunately Alan's version loses the typically Irish rhyme royal or internal rhyme in the last line. 'Duke's' original line was:
"In an eight hour day, for eight bob pay, on the shores of Botany Bay."This was a line that was important to 'Duke', a staunch unionist, being a restatement of a stonemason's and bricklayer's union motto of the late 1800s. They demanded: "Eight hour's work, eight hour's play and eight hours sleep" ... achieved as a world-wide first in improved working conditions. (At the time, many workers in Britain were still working 12 or 14 hours a day, six day a week!)
#2 is a modern verse, which I first heard on a recording of the modern (1970s - to present ... with 48 changes in the line-up) "Bushwackers group ('Duke' was associated with the earlier Bushwhackers of the early/mid 1950s that defined the modern revival idea of a "Bush Band"..)
Regards,
Bob Bolton