SALSA SATURDAY

In Australia We have a bit of an identity crisis in regards to national anthems. We started with the British "God Save the Queen", which quite frankly meant nothing at all to anyone born outside England. Then we changed to "Advance Australia Fair", which also holds no powerful message to tug at our Australian pride (may only be my opinion). At school we were always taught the following poem which was written by the author during and extended stay in the UK

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 other wise.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
of ragged montain ranges,
of drought 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 saphire- misted of mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon.
Green tangle of the brushes
Where lithe lianes 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 the 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 thought will fly.


HOME