"Jim Jones at Botany Bay" (Roud 5478)[1] is a traditional Australian folk ballad dating from the early 19th-century. The narrator, Jim Jones, is found guilty of poaching and sentenced to transportation to the penal colony of New South Wales. En route, his ship is attacked by pirates, but the crew holds them off. When the narrator remarks that he would rather have joined the pirates or indeed drowned at sea than gone to Botany Bay, Jones is reminded by his captors that any mischief will be met with the whip. In the final verse, Jones describes the daily drudgery and degradation of life as a convict in Australia, and dreams of joining the bushrangers (escaped convicts turned outlaws) and taking revenge on his floggers.[2]
Australian folklorists such as Bill Scott date the song's composition to the years immediately preceding 1830 when bushranger Jack Donahue, who is named in the song, was fatally shot by troopers. The oldest surviving written version of the ballad is found in Old Pioneering Days in the Sunny South (1907), a book of reminiscences by Charles McAlister, a pioneer who drove bullock teams in southern-eastern New South Wales in the 1840s. According to folklorist A. L. Lloyd, "Jim Jones at Botany Bay" may have been lost to history had McAlister not included it in his book.[3]
McAlister said "Jim Jones at Botany Bay" was sung to the tune of "Irish Molly O".[4] Others consider it likely that it was sung to the tune of the Irish rebel song "Skibbereen".
^"Search".
^"Australian Folk Songs | Jim Jones at Botany Bay".
^"Sleeve notes to The Great Australian Legend, A Panorama of Bush Balladry and Song; A.L. Lloyd, Trevor Lucas & Martyn Wyndham-Read,
Topic Records TSDL203
^Charles MacAlister, Old Pioneering Days in the Sunny South http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-52777702/view?partId=nla.obj-244136796#page/n87/mode/1up pp 72-3
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