The second verse of Dorothea Mackellar’s My Country is embedded into the psyche of Australia.
Even for someone like me who can’t stand being outdoors.
It will be constantly referenced in some form or another over this Australia Day weekend.
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!
There are five other stanzas in the original.
Apparently there’s some controversy surrounding the original word ‘ragged’ against the more popularly used ‘rugged’.
Go over to the Dorothea Mackellar website and read the whole poem and then spend some time looking around.
mgpcpastor's blog 