The Grand Bogan's video: Commonwealth of Australia Moreton Bay

From True Patriots All , by Geoffrey C. Ingleton, who notes that the ballad is "very old and possibly was contemporary with Logan's death". The manuscript was obtained in Queensland by J.R.Scott in 1916. Simon McDonald from Creswick in Victoria sings a variant of these words to a related tune, see 'Moreton Bay 2' in this collection. Patrick Logan became Commandant of the Moreton Bay penal settlement in 1826. He was hated by the convicts for his harsh methods. He did some exploring and was surveying the Upper Brisbane river when he was killed by Aborigines in 1830. Logan was a relentless flogger as shown in a sample record of his floggings that were noted in the diary of one of the prison clerks. This records that from February to October in 1828 Logan ordered 200 floggings with over 11,000 lashes. When Logan's body was brought back to Moreton Bay, the convicts "manifested insane joy at the news of his murder, and sang and hoorayed all night, in defiance of the warders." Bushranger Ned Kelly used lines from the ballad in his "Jerilderie Letter" in 1879 ("Port McQuarrie Toweringabbie Norfolk island and Emu plains and in those places of tyranny and condemnation many a blooming Irish man rather than subdue to the Saxon yoke were flogged to death and bravely died in servile chains.") In 1911, Bushranger Jack Bradshaw printed a version in his True History of the Australian Bushrangers . Bradshaw printed the song again in Twenty Years of Prison Life in the Gaols of NSW attributing it to "poor old Frank McNamara". Francis MacNamara (Frank the Poet) recited it as he stepped off his convict ship in 1832 at Sydney Cove. MacNamara was subjected to all the brutality of the convict system in Australia, and was to spend years in various penal settlements. He served time in Port Arthur in Van Diemen's Land concurrently with John Kelly, Ned Kelly's father. No doubt it was there that Kelly learnt MacNamara's 'The Convict's Arrival' or 'The Convict's Lament on the Death of Captain Logan' which we now know as 'Moreton Bay'. Francis MacNamara wrote many fine poems including 'The Convict's Tour of Hell', 'The Cyprus Brig' and one of the many versions of 'The Wild Colonial Boy'. Lyrics: One Sunday morning as I went walking By Brisbane waters I chanced to stray I heard a convict his fate bewailing As on the sunny river bank I lay I am a native from Erin's island But banished now from my native shore They stole me from my aged parents And from the maiden I do adore I've been a prisoner at Port Macquarie At Norfolk Island and Emu Plains At Castle Hill and at cursed Toongabbie At all these settlements I've been in chains But of all places of condemnation And penal stations in New South Wales To Moreton Bay I have found no equal Excessive tyranny each day prevails For three long years I was beastly treated And heavy irons on my legs I wore My back from flogging was lacerated And oft times painted with my crimson gore And many a man from downright starvation Lies mouldering now underneath the clay And Captain Logan he had us mangled All at the triangles of Moreton Bay Like the Egyptians and ancient Hebrews We were oppressed under Logan's yoke Till a native black lying there in ambush Did deal this tyrant his mortal stroke My fellow prisoners be exhilarated That all such monsters such a death may find And when from bondage we are liberated Our former sufferings will fade from mind