G'day bububaka / Becca ... if you're still around after 3 years and some months ...,

I found all the information and scholarship quite interesting ... then it dawned on me that we have an Australian "cross-cultural" song that also draws on the same structure for the first stanza: Old Black Alice ... or, sometimes The Goodiwindi Song. The song concerns a Murri (Aboriginal) woman who probably works on a property that raised merino sheep in Queensland, near the town of Goondiwindi.

It's hard to say if the song originates among the Murri (who might have been exposed to some European schooloing ... and met up with the sampler text style that underlies the Johnson, Johnson text - or if the song started out as a white settler-composed song for an event such as a concert at the sheep station (~ "ranch"). Either way, it has survived among both the Murri and the white settlers ... and, apparently, acquired a stronger sense of pride in their own culture and race (at least, in the versions I prefer!).

This is the entry from Ron Edwards' Australian Folk Song Index - with my condensation of the pertinent notes:

The Goondiwindi Song

Oh, it's old Black Alice are my name, Wellshot are my station,
It's no disgrace, the old black face, it's the colour of my nation.
Oh, it's boomeri-eye and mind your eye, and don't kick up a shindy.
I've got a boy in Camooweal and one in Goondiwindi.

I can polka, I can waltz, I can dance the figures,
White man find 'em too much work, teach 'em to the niggers!
Dance me up and dance me down, I don't mind your colour,
I've got a boy in Kingaroy and one in Cunnamulla.

God he made the lubra girl that all the white girls run down,
He made the whites by the light of day, the black ones after sundown.
Dance the black girl round and round, don't you dare despise her!
I've got a man at Cuddapan, and another one at Mount Isa.

White man wash in old tin tub, black man wash much cleaner,
Black man wash in Condamine and in the Diamantina.
Listen to the beat and mind your feet, don't exhaust my patience!
I'm off next week to Combo Creek to meet my fine relations.

As printed in the Joy Durst Memorial Songbook

Tune: Variant of The Rose Tree (or Portláirge)

Ron Edwards notes, in his Australian Folk Song Index, The Rams Skull Press, 2005: Welltown is probably the original location of the song as it is 64 kilometres west of Goondiwindi on the road to Nungindi and about 19 kilometres from the NSW border. It was owned by William Leonard and son and was an old established merino stud. My informant, Mrs Makim, thought that Snowdrop Sally* had worked there as a cook "in the old days".

* "Snowdrop Sally" and "Snowdrop Willy" each appear as the singer in the other collected versions of the song. "Snowdrop" was the sort of casual name that whites of the period might give to a Murri (Aboriginal) in their employ … but it's interesting to see it appearing as both male and female protagonists.

As the collected versions of the song are closely related to one geographical region, it may be that the informants are remembering a Murri couple who did domestic work on Wellshot Station (merino sheep "ranch").

The tune I use - and published in the Bush Music Club's Mulga Wire, #70, December 1988, is a variant of The Rose Tree (or Portláirge), both in metre and the notes of the second part. I can't detail how that one evolved - but I can supply dots (or, at least, ABC notation) if anyone is interested.

Regards,

Bob