Australia Day - January 26th

My ancestors who made the journey from The British Isles to the great southern land in the 19th century probably dreamed, like Dorothea Mackellar, of "field and coppice". We, their ancestors, rejoice in our life in "the sunburnt country" and thank those ancestors for making a treacherous journey by sea to the "wide brown land". We love "the lucky country".

I thank The Wallerawang Branch Library Blog for giving me the idea of posting Mackellar's classic ode to my blog for Australia Day.


My Country By Dorothea Mackellar (1885-1968, written in 1904) The love of field and coppice,Of green and shaded lanes.Of ordered woods and gardensIs running in your veins,Strong love of grey-blue distanceBrown streams and soft dim skiesI know but cannot share it,My love is otherwise.
I love a sunburnt country,A land of sweeping plains,Of ragged mountain ranges,Of droughts and flooding rains.I love her far horizons,I love her jewel-sea,Her beauty and her terror -The wide brown land for me!
A stark white ring-barked forestAll tragic to the moon,The sapphire-misted mountains,The hot gold hush of noon.Green tangle of the brushes,Where lithe lianas coil,And orchids deck the tree-topsAnd ferns the warm dark soil.
Core of my heart, my country!Her pitiless blue sky,When sick at heart, around us,We see the cattle die -But then the grey clouds gather,And we can bless againThe drumming of an army,The steady, soaking rain.
Core of my heart, my country!Land of the Rainbow Gold,For flood and fire and famine,She pays us back threefold -Over the thirsty paddocks,Watch, after many days,The filmy veil of greennessThat thickens as we gaze. An opal-hearted country,A wilful, lavish land -All you who have not loved her,You will not understand -Though earth holds many splendours,Wherever I may die,I know to what brown countryMy homing thoughts will fly.