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 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 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
 My Country
by Dorothea Mackellar

1. Answer the following questions:

a) What or who is the subject of this poem?

The subject of this poem is Australia

b) Why did Dorothea Mackellar write this poem?

to show her British friend that Australia can be good too

c) What are some of the positive aspects of the Australian landscape mentioned in
My Country? (e.g., sweeping plains)
her jewel sea
Sapphire misted hills
Wide horizons

d) What are some of the negative realities of the Australian landscape mentioned in
My Country? (e.g., fires)

draught and flooding rains

Rugged mountains

e) How often does the poem shift between different times, locations, or places?

about every stanza

f) How does the Australian landscape differ from the English landscape?
the English landscape is still, fixed and plain but compared to Australia it can go from draught to
flooding rains and then to bush fires

2. How many stanzas are in this poem?

there are 6 stanzas in this poem

3. Find dictionary meanings for the following words from My Country:

Coppice:
 an area of woodland in which the trees or shrubs are periodically cut back to ground level to stimulate growth
and provide firewood or timber:

Lithe:
thin, supple, and graceful

Pitiless:
showing no pity; cruel

Filmy:
thin and translucent

Wilful:
intentional; deliberate

4. Identify some of the different poetic devices used in My Country

Metaphor – a direct comparison

the drumming of an army

Simile – comparison using like, than or as

it thickens as we gaze

Personification – giving human qualities to non-human things

green tangles of the forest

Onomatopoeia – the formation of a word from a sound associated with what is named

The hot gold hush of noon.

Alliteration – the occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely
connected words.

for flood fire and famine

Imagery – creating pictures with words

I love a sun burnt country

5. Is Dorothea Mackellar’s poem about Australia still relevant today?

Why/Why not?

it is not as relevant as there as there are more good things from Australia to add for example
the education system or the Sydney opera house

6. Paragraph

Write a paragraph explaining how the Australian landscape has changed and/or stayed the same since
Dorothea Mackellar wrote My Country in 1908.

Please note:
Your paragraph should be at least 100 words long.

The Australian landscape has changed a lot since when she wrote this poem for example the
population has tripled, the living conditions are much better now for the people so there isn’t much
famine at all. But the countryside has not changed much since then, except for the technology.