Last year I had Uncle Walters old tapes digitised to CD’s.  This has allowed the opportunity to listen and write the words to three of these really old songs, of course in the tradition of the locals, references several well know identities of times, long past. We think the recordings were made around the 1950’s.

*The first song is

Hooray my boys my sails are set in my Adeline bound for town

we just passed Possum Boat Harbour and we’ll soon be into town

I owe old Tom Langley a thousand pounds

and I wished I owed him more

the day that Billy Riddle pasted the notes up on the door

It hard to part with Polly my love and fills my heart with woe

to leave Possum Boat Harbour

where the dear little cabbages grow.

*The second song

In nineteen hundred and five me boys we down to the mark

we went to Jerry Dunams to buy a bottle of spark

we bought 2 bottles and took 3 more and sardines by the score

and now they say they are for sale at Harold Walkers store

Now Hogan Isles tired of single life

is going across to Kangaroo to get himself a wife

he’s going to ask big Ellen and if she says no

he doesn’t give a bugger, cause on the Spree he’ll go

Now old Billy the Whaler had a house and 6 fowls

he had a dog names Shepherd and around the house he prowls

He had a little garden, grown taters by the ton, and as far as growing onions – are second best to none.

*the last song titled ….’Born on Old Cape Barren.’

I was born on old Cape Barren ……….in them blue hills over there

I was just a little baby when my dear old Mamma died

Its been years now since we parted and the times drawing nearer

I will meet my dear old Mamma……. in them blue hills over there

It’s been years since we parted and the times drawing nearer

I will meet my dear old Mamma……. in them blue hills over there

So I was born on Old Cape Barren……… in them blue hills over there

just remember what I told you about them blue hills over there.