My Country
Encyclopedia
Cultural icon
A cultural icon can be a symbol, logo, picture, name, face, person, building or other image that is readily recognized and generally represents an object or concept with great cultural significance to a wide cultural group...
patriotic poem about Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, written by Dorothea Mackellar
Dorothea Mackellar
Isobel Marion Dorothea Mackellar, OBE was an Australian poet and fiction writer.The only daughter of noted physician and parliamentarian Sir Charles Mackellar, she was born in Sydney in 1885...
(1885-1968) at the age of 19 while homesick in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. After travelling through Europe extensively with her father during her teenage years she started writing the poem in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
in 1904 and re-wrote it several times before her return to Sydney. The poem was first published in the London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
Spectator in 1908 under the title "Core of My Heart". It was reprinted in many Australian newspapers, quickly becoming well known and establishing Mackellar as a poet.
Mackellar's family owned substantial properties in the Gunnedah
Gunnedah, New South Wales
Gunnedah is a town and Local government area in north-eastern New South Wales, Australia. 7,542 people lived in the town of Gunnedah in 2006, including 931 indigenous people ....
district of New South Wales
New South Wales
New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...
and a property (Torryburn) in the Paterson district. The inspiration for her poems undoubtedly came from the time she spent on the rural properties as a child. The famous poem is believed to have been directly inspired by witnessing the break of a drought when she was at Torryburn; My Country uses metaphorical
Metaphor
A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...
imagery to describe the land after the breaking of a long drought
Drought
A drought is an extended period of months or years when a region notes a deficiency in its water supply. Generally, this occurs when a region receives consistently below average precipitation. It can have a substantial impact on the ecosystem and agriculture of the affected region...
. Of ragged mountain ranges possibly refer to the Mount Royal Ranges
Mount Royal National Park
Mount Royal is a national park in New South Wales, Australia. It is 187 km north of Sydney.The park is part of the Barrington Tops Area of the World Heritage Site Gondwana Rainforests of Australia inscribed in 1986 and which was also added to the Australian National Heritage List in 2007.-See...
, and the Barrington Tops.
The first stanza
Stanza
In poetry, a stanza is a unit within a larger poem. In modern poetry, the term is often equivalent with strophe; in popular vocal music, a stanza is typically referred to as a "verse"...
refers to England, and the fact that the vast majority of Australians of that era were of British birth or ancestry. Most Australians are generally not aware of this first stanza even though the second stanza is amongst the best-known pieces of Australian poetry.
MacKellar's first anthology of poems, The Closed Door, published in Australian in 1911 included the poem. The last line of the third stanza, "And ferns the warm dark soil" originally read as "And ferns the crimson soil". Her second anthology, The Witch Maid & Other Verses, published in 1914 included the original version as shown below. A recording made by the radio and TV actor Leonard Teale
Leonard Teale
Leonard Teale AO , born Leonard George Thiele in Brisbane, was a well-known Australian actor of radio, television and films....
became so popular in the 1970s that his reading of the first lines of the second stanza were often used to parody him.
External links
- 'My Country' was added to the National Film and Sound Archive's Sounds of Australia Registry in 2009
- Listen to 'My Country' read by Dorothea Mackellar and read more about it on australianscreen online