Regarding the title of this thread, this may be a NZ song but no way is it trad!
It may have been a depression era poem and often these were printed in newspapers at the time, but I don't believe it was widely known anywhere in this country until 'New Zealand Folksongs - Songs of a Young Country' came out. This included songs or tunes that had been written by Neil Colquhoun, who then attributed them to Anon.
Neil was a school teacher who became a music specialist for the Wellington Education Board.
He was also an early singer of folk songs (late 50s, early 60s) and yes, he did a lot of valuable work bringing unknown songs to our attention but the problem was, he would write his own tune to poems and then present them as trad.
Dylan would pinch tunes and say he'd written them, Neil would write tunes and say I found it!
When we tried to trace the provenance of the songs, the trail usually led back to one person.
Please don't think that this is a real NZ folk song - I don't think there are very many people who know it or sing it - I've never heard it sung in folk clubs over the 40+ years I have been going.
Robyn