Talking Point: Still loving a sunburnt country

IAN COLE: Dorothea Mackellar’s poem inspires optimism in even the toughest times

DROUGHT: Waiting for the water to flow once more. Picture: GETTY

In this testing time of drought, bushfires and floods, I thought it might be timely to look at the positive attitude of one particular person from the past in regard to our ‘lucky’ country.

One hundred and twelve years ago, a homesick Dorothea Mackellar, in London, wrote a poem with which many Australians are familiar. Hopefully I’m not being insensitive to those who have suffered from the bushfires and floods, when I quote the most remembered lines from her poem.

I love a sunburnt country

A land of sweeping plains

Of ragged mountain ranges

Of droughts and flooding rains.

As a kid in either grade four or five, I had to learn much of this poem off by heart. Sixty years later I can still remember bits and pieces and so can many of my generation! And why not? Kids in the USA learn off-by-heart the Declaration of Independence and Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Besides, back at primary school, we were inundated with songs from England, poems from England and even lines from a song that said.

Although I live in this fair clime

I am a Briton all the time.

Good Heavens! No wonder I can recall a poem about Australia.

Re-reading the poem recently, it was interesting to remember a couple of things. Firstly, the poem was originally called Core of my Heart and secondly, the verse quoted above, was verse two, not the opening verse.

It must have been hard for an English readership to appreciate how Dorothea Mackellar felt about growing up in Australia.

An opal-hearted country

A wilful lavish land

All you who have not loved her

You will not understand.

In fact, it can be quite hard to get people to appreciate Australia, even for Australians to do so. Banjo Patterson and Henry Lawson invigorated the process and in more recent times Bruce Woodley co-wrote We Are Australian to give pride in Australia a further boost.

Also, I believe Peter Allen encapsulated Australians’ feelings about Australia when he wrote and sang, I Still Call Australia Home. It resonated with many expats overseas and probably with the expats’ parents at home, who longed for their kids’ return.

Back to Dorothea Mackellar’s poem. She provided optimism for Australia with her verse about flood and fire, when 100 years ago, there was no talk about climate change. In her youth she must have seen the damage of both flood and fire and also saw it in her later life, because she lived to be 82.

She intimated that good times were always around the corner in Australia after any catastrophe, when her second last verse proclaimed,

Core of my heart, my country

Land of the rainbow gold

For flood and fire and famine

She pays us back three-fold.

Over the thirsty paddocks

Watch, after many days

The filmy vein of greenness

That thickens as you gaze.

Tasmanian Ian Cole is a retired teacher and one-time Labor MP.