G'day Keith Murphy (and the rest ... and JennieG),

I realise that the 'Nic Jones version': of which Capt. Birdseye says: "similiar verses in the penguin book of australian folk songs", is the subject of the discussion (and some puzzlement over the most unusual return of a transported convict.

The verses John Manifold published in the Penguin Book are, indeed, not really "Australian" (and the b***er didn't publish the single verse he had collected of an Australian version!). This was so annoying that, when the main singer with the 'bush band' I worked with in the '80s wanted to to the song ... I ended up trying to guess what a relevant Australian version might have looked like. These are my notes, preceding my (very loose) reconstruction:

This was composed (c. 1990) in frustration at Ron Edward's printing, in The Big Book of Australian Folk Songs, Rigby Ltd. Australia, 1976) the Sussex text, collected by W. Percy Merrick … after Mrs M. Webb, of Cairns, Queensland could only remember a first verse of a version of the song her father sang. His song apparently had the ex-convict hero reaching the Victorian Goldfields and being killed in the Eureka Stockade uprising.

I wrote a version within the original framework and an attempted mid 19th century style- but did not kill off the ex-convict hero!

Isle of France
Tune: Trad.          New Words: Bob Bolton

As the sun went down and the moon advanced,
A storm swept up on the "Isle of France".
That ship was swept on to hidden shoals,
I alone was saved        of one hundred souls.

On a speedy barque, named for that fair isle,
I was sailing home, freed from durance vile,
To my old home town and to all I know,
When vengeful fate struck this heavy blow.

I fought the waves, fled the savage shark,
On a broken spar from our shattered barque.
I came ashore, in the dark of night,
Fifty miles west of Port Phillip light.

I was found and saved by a party bold,
Bound for Ballaarat, there to search for gold.
So I went with them, sharing good or ill:
Staked a digger's claim, south of Bakery Hill.

But the gold was scarce and the licence fee,
Was a pound too much for a man like me;
So with Lalor, Vern, and Black and Hayes,
A flag of stars, at Eureka raised.

That Sunday morn, we were scarce awake,
When the Redcoat troops did our stockade take.
Full thirty miners lay in their gore:
They thought they'd crushed us for evermore!

But the Miner's Right, we have won at last.
It's history now, the reforms have passed.
But remember how the reform was made
At Eureka Lead, in a bush stockade.

Regard(les)s,

Bob Bolton