Hello All,
Dorothea McKellar's iconic poem My Country - still rings very true. Two years ago to the day Bundaberg was cut in half by the second flood within a period of two weeks with many houses inundated. Now all the grass that grew thick and green two years ago has dried out throughout the district. Bush fires are burning. Australia is now certainly living up to the line about a sun burnt country.
I hope everyone gets through this season and those who have lost their homes can rebuild and recover.
Stay cool everyone
Kind Regards
Lionel
My Country
by Dorothea McKellar
(1885–1968)
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. 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!
The stark white ring-barked forests,
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.
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.
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.
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.
Accessed Thursday 10th January 2013 from My Country - an iconic poem about Australia by Dorothea McKellar
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