"My Country" Trivia Quiz

Answer:

Dorothea is best described as a "bush poet" and most of her works draw upon her experiences when visiting the farms of her brothers in the town of Gunnedah, situated in north-central New South Wales. However, "My Country" was not written in Australia, but in England. Mackellar commenced working on it in 1904 as a nineteen year old, who'd spent her teenage years travelling through Europe with her father. Consequently, the verses are drawn from her experiences and memories of home, and this only serves to further highlight the impact that the bush had on her and the patriotism that she felt for her land. "My Country" was first published in London in 1908 with the original title being "Core of My Heart".

The poem opens by contrasting the lush greenness that Dorothea experienced in England but, despite this, her heart yearns for another place. (To this end, I have placed the entirety of the poem at the end of this so that you are able to draw on the comments that follow). In contrast she projects the image of Australia as a country of extremes, a place of wildness and terror but built within these immoderates, there lies a beauty that is more intense than the sumptuousness of England's hillsides. Note that in the second verse (below) that even in the droughts and the floods she finds romance and glory.

She further emphasizes the untamed Australia by comparing it with the "ordered woods and gardens" (first verse below) in England but then uses phrases such as "jewel sea" (second verse below), "sapphire misted mountains" and "hot gold hush of noon" (third verse below) to indicate that, in her eyes, Australia is the true gem. This will be strengthened in the last verse (below) where she calls the land an "opal hearted country".

I now offer you the whole of the poem for you to enjoy.

"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!

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."