The first appearance of the poem was as part of a humorous "Bon Gaultier" article entitled "My Wife Album" in Tait's Edinburgh Magazine (Jan 1844, pp. 49-55). Here the verses are given an elaborate fictitious provenance:
"They were sent me by a young man who left his native city of Glasgow, some ten years ago, after a protracted interview, conducted with the greatest propriety on both sides, with the Lord Justice clerk of the period, in presence of several of the junior members of the bar, who happened to be on circuit at the time. He went out in one of her Majesty's vessels, on a permanent engagement by government for seven years. It was part of his duty to see to the repair of the roads in the colony; and he was thus thrown much into the society of a literary gentleman from London, who had seen a good deal of life in the colony, and who happened to be under a similar engagement. For days on days, as he wrote me, they used to sit side by side, amusing themselves with geological hammers upon the whinstone of Australia, linked together, not so much, perhaps, by the ties of friendship, as by a chain of some four hundred-weight, which was the symbol of their government appointment. It was in this situation that my young friend heard from the lips of his companion the following erotic appeal, which may be called THE CONVICT AND THE AUSTRALIAN LADY."
