My Country

"My Country" is an iconic patriotic poem about Australia, written by Dorothea Mackellar (1885-1968) at the age of 19 while homesick in England. After travelling through Europe extensively with her father during her teenage years she started writing the poem in London in 1904 and re-wrote it several times before her return to Sydney. The poem was first published in the London 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 district of 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 imagery to describe the land after the breaking of a long drought. Of ragged mountain ranges possibly refer to the Mount Royal Ranges, and the Barrington Tops.

To many the poem is an overtly romanticised version of "The Australian condition" as Mackellar's family were of considerable fortune and social favour. The poem reflects the romanticised and somewhat idealised reflection of a writer yearning to be taken back to Gunnedah

The first stanza 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 became so popular in the 1970s that his reading of the first lines of the second stanza were often used to parody him.