G'day Martin,

Thanks for the words. Don't fret about the (lack of) formatting - I always have to do some reformatting in any text from the web or email and, since I work in a publishing are, I'm quite used to completely re-formatting text.

The words are pretty high-flown at times, but that was common enough in its day. I suspect that the Australian version could be written by someone who wanted to put his real experience of convict servitude on the record - and used the tune of a song that just seemed too sentimental to sing out here.

I ran through the first verse and it fits perfectly to the Exile of Erin tune that I know. The tune is pretty typical of the sort of song suitable for a trained tenor. The range is one octave and a fifth (from Bb to F in the octave above in the printed version I have seen).

For my voice, I pitch it a bit lower, in G, and the range is from a low G to D in the next octave above. This is the same range as the Londonderry Air (Danny Boy, Acushla Mine, etcetera) another tune that is easy to muck up if you don't have a trained voice or a good natural range.

Regards,

Bob Bolton