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The Bass Strait sealing rush began in eighteen-o-three,
where at least a dozen vessels were wrestling with the sea,
for the China trade was booming, for the want of skins and oils.
This was the first real export, from Australian soils.

With prices high as gold, more entered in the Strait.
Ships joining in the rush, from India, France, U.S.A.
Sea Elephants roaming King and the nearby islands,
soon disappeared as the buccaneers cut the big herds down.

Cutters, brigs and schooners, dared through mist and haze,
as the cut-throats, thieves and pirates, plied their bloody trade.
With-in a loose alliance they colonized the islands,
along the southern coast in the Bass Strait sealing days.

Governor King encouraged sealing, for its productive article,
though he couldn’t find an answer when the French entered the cull.
When the ship ‘Surprise’ was wrecked, the crew died in the water.
The governor he wrote, ‘this may stop advances from this quarter’.

Commandant Bowan who controlled Tasmanian land settlement,
underhand from an American, four hundred pounds to his pocket went.
Delano was prepared to pay for the fortune he would rend.
The commandant gave an extra lift - seventeen Botany Bay men.

New sealing grounds were found in the late of eighteen-o-three.
Kangaroo Island produced thousands to be stored way up in Sydney.
Eleven men on the ‘Antipodes’ slaughtered ‘til o-five,            
where sixty thousand skins were loaded - a record for all time.
 
Labourers they left the land for their fortunes to be made.
Boarded the ‘Union’ or the ‘Pilgrim’ - any boat that’s in the trade.
Now Governor King was turning as new problems showed their face.
So many men had left the land with no one to take their place.

monologue
Sealing died hard in Bass Strait. By seventy-one the trade for skins faded away. 
The need for seal oil disappeared and now today, seals are protected.
A long haul away from the days back when -

Cutters, brigs and schooners, dared through mist and haze,
as the cut-throats, thieves and pirates, plied their bloody trade.
With-in a loose alliance they colonized the islands,
along the southern coast in the Bass Strait sealing days.
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