My Country by Dorothea MacKellar

My Country by Dorothea Mackellar


The love of field and coppice
Of green and shaded lanes.
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins,
Strong love of grey-blue distance
Brown streams and soft dim skies
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

Capertee Valley, NSW


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!

Broome coastline, WA


A stark white ring-barked forest
All 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-tops
And ferns the warm dark soil.

North Haven, NSW


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 again
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.

Mudgee, NSW


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 greenness
That thickens as we gaze.

The Olga's, NT


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 country
My homing thoughts will fly.

Weethalie, NSW


The poem is Dorothea Mackellar's; the photo's all mine!

Isobel Marion Dorothea Mackellar was born July 1st 1885 in Point Piper, Sydney.

Her father was a noted doctor & parliamentarian.
They had family property in the Hunter region and around Gunnedah.

The Mackellar family travelled the world extensively and Dorothea became fluent in several languages (French, German, Spanish & Italian).

My Country was written during a visit to England when Dorothea was 19.
She was obviously feeling homesick.

Dorothea never married & died 14th January 1968.
Her ashes are buried in Waverley Cemetery.