PROMPTING ME TO WRITE - Australian by Choice.

Random thoughts of an Adelaide mind on Australia Day.

Do we really value the celebration of our Nation - or is it just an excuse for a holiday, a barbeque and a booze up?  Prawns and steak on the barbeque, flies, beer and sand on the beach - it that what you think about when you think about Australia Day.   Yes they can be good memories, but it is my belief that we should be more serious in our thoughts and more reverent to the land that gave us birth/or adopted us.

I love this wide brown land with all her quirks of nature - and right now Mother Nature is dealing out some difficult times both in Queensland and Western Australia - floods and fires.  

My Country

by

Dorothea Mackellar

(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 sun burnt 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 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.

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.

                       Dorothea Mackellar

Dorothea Mackellar was 19 when she wrote this - homesick in England.

We need to respect the land, honour it's first inhabitants and fiercely protect her environment and what happens here.  I love Australia with a passion and am proud to say I am Australian by choice.   I still love and respect my heritage, but this is where I live, it is my home and the birthplace of my children.

The skies above are azure and the sea blue and clear and this poem describes the country I love to the letter.

Love and hugs,

Linda.