George and I have been performing Gerry Hallom's setting, putting back in Lawson's original first verse and final chorus, for about 10 years or so. We've kept the words as Lawson wrote them, out of respect for the author - since the words are readily available in any collection of Lawson's poetry, why change them? (Note: over the years, I've managed to find at least 4 copies of "The Collected Verse of Henry Lawson" in various Angus & Robertson editions in used bookstores here in the US).

Bob was kind enough to send me one of the last remaining copies of Chris Kempster's book a few years ago, and Danny Spooner sent me the great double CD of Kempster mentioned above. The book is wonderful - Chris collected multiple tune settings for individual Lawson poems by many different composers, not just his own. I think that part of the CD project is an attempt to raise money to re-issue the book.

When we visited with Bob and Margaret Walters last year, George and I sang our version of "Outside Track", thinking it would be a novelty to hear it with all the verses and the final chorus - we didn't know at the time that Margaret and John had already recorded it that way! Everyone sang along, though. Talk about coals to Newcastle...

We also made a stop in Gundagai at this strange little museum in the storage area above the main street hardware store. There they had on display Henry Lawson's walking stick, a battered leather chair claiming to be his, facsimile copies of several letters, and an old Australian $10 bill with his picture on it. Sad to say, the current $10AU bill has replaced Lawson with Banjo Patterson - over 100 years later, and they're still competing with each other!