11 Aug 2011

Excerpt from 'My Country' -- Dorothea McKellar

[1885–1968, Australian]

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!


Source: First published in London Spectator in 1908 under the title ‘Core of My Heart’.
Dorothea was 19 when she wrote this poem.