My Country

Two weeks ago, this recent Floridian arrived in Sydney - the bright, generous seaside mecca where 6 million Australians reside. They are the great-great-great grandchildren of iron-willed English convicts and descendants of original settlers who have astoundingly been on this continent for 60,000 years, and they are the scores of more recent arrivals from Asia, Europe, and the Americas whose dialects mingle together on every street of this international city.

Long prior to my arrival, I began my homework and started to realize all that I just did not know about this country. Beyond kangaroos, Vegemite, Nicole Kidman, and g'day mate, there is a wild history to uncover and a vast landscape to discover. I have only begun to scratch the surface. In this project, I hope to show just one recent arrival's respectful and searching perspective on the Land Down Under.

Before I begin, let me share the inspiration for this blog's title. In a Presbyterian second-hand shop, we picked up a dusty paperback of Australian poetry called "Cross Country." In perusing it, I was charmed by Dorothea Mackellar's simple and effusive love song to Australia ( this poem also serves as the inspiration for the title of Bill Bryson's wonderful travelogue, In a Sunburned Country).

Dorothea ... take it away!

My Country

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!

The stark white ring-barked forests,

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.

The 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 greeness

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.