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 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 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.

Dorothea Mackellar

This is Dorothea Mackellar’s poem, “My Country” which she wrote as she missed Australia when she was in the UK. I have taken the phrase “of droughts and flooding rains” as we are in those flooding rains once more. I drove past the river which is at the bottom of our road and already the waters are over the bridge and a delighted duck was make the most of it. For all of us though the incessant rain and dark skies bring back memories of recent floods and there is no doubt that they are becoming more frequent.

Meanwhile in Victoria devastating fires have burnt through homes. Ravaged scenes are all around. We need to redouble our efforts to reverse some of the effects of global warming.