Introduction: “My Country” by Dorothea Mackellar
“My Country” by Dorothea Mackellar first appeared in The Spectator in 1908 and was later included in her 1911 poetry collection The Closed Door. The poem expresses Mackellar’s deep emotional attachment to Australia, contrasting it with the gentle and temperate English landscape admired by others. Its main ideas revolve around the fierce beauty, harsh climate, and raw vitality of the Australian environment, highlighting elements such as droughts, floods, and sweeping plains. Mackellar’s patriotic fervor shines through with lines like “I love a sunburnt country” and “Core of my heart, my country!” which celebrate the extremes and uniqueness of the land. The poem became popular because it captured a strong sense of national identity and pride, especially during a time when Australia was still forging its cultural independence from Britain. Through vivid imagery—“opal-hearted country,” “sapphire-misted mountains”—Mackellar evokes both the grandeur and the struggle of rural life, resonating with generations of Australians who recognize the emotional truth behind its rugged landscapes.
Text: “My Country” by Dorothea Mackellar
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.
An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land –
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand –
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.
Annotations: “My Country” by Dorothea Mackellar
| Stanza | Simplified Meaning | Key Literary Devices | Highlighted Examples |
| Stanza 1 | The poet respects others’ love for England’s soft, green landscape, but she feels a different passion for another land. | 🌄 Imagery, 🌀 Contrast, 🎶 Alliteration | “green and shaded lanes” 🌄, “I know but cannot share it” 🌀 |
| Stanza 2 | She declares her love for Australia, a place of dramatic landscapes, intense weather, and wild beauty. | 🌄 Imagery, ❤️ Personification, 🔁 Repetition, 🌀 Contrast | “sunburnt country” 🌄, “Her beauty and her terror” ❤️, “I love…I love…” 🔁 |
| Stanza 3 | The poet continues describing nature’s intensity: white forests, misted mountains, and tangled rainforests. | 🌄 Imagery, ✨ Symbolism, 🎶 Alliteration | “sapphire-misted mountains” 🌄, “hot gold hush” ✨, “green tangle of the brushes” 🎶 |
| Stanza 4 | Despite the cruelty of the land, such as droughts killing cattle, rain brings relief and renewal. | ❤️ Personification, 🌄 Imagery, 💥 Hyperbole, 🔁 Repetition | “Her pitiless blue sky” ❤️, “see the cattle die” 🌄, “drumming of an army” 💥 |
| Stanza 5 | She celebrates the land’s ability to recover and thrive after suffering, symbolized by the greening of paddocks. | 🌄 Imagery, ✨ Symbolism, 🔁 Repetition | “Land of the Rainbow Gold” ✨, “filmy veil of greenness” 🌄, “She pays us back threefold” 🔁 |
| Stanza 6 | The poet calls Australia a wild and rich land. She feels deeply bonded to it and knows her heart will always return there. | 🗣️ Apostrophe, 🌄 Imagery, ✨ Symbolism, 💥 Hyperbole | “Core of my heart, my country!” 🗣️, “opal-hearted country” ✨, “my homing thoughts will fly” 💥 |
Literary And Poetic Devices: “My Country” by Dorothea Mackellar
| Device | Example from Poem | Explanation |
| 🎶 Alliteration | “flood and fire and famine” | Repetition of initial consonant sounds creates rhythm and musicality. |
| 📚 Allusion | “Land of the Rainbow Gold” | Refers to a common legend (gold at a rainbow’s end), symbolizing hope. |
| 🔁 Anaphora | “I love… I love…” | Repetition at the start of lines emphasizes passion and emotional depth. |
| 🗣️ Apostrophe | “Core of my heart, my country!” | Directly addressing the country as if it were a person. |
| 🎵 Assonance | “sapphire-misted mountains” | Repetition of vowel sounds adds a smooth, lyrical quality. |
| 🌀 Contrast | “Her beauty and her terror” | Shows the dual nature of the land: both breathtaking and dangerous. |
| ↩️ Enjambment | “Wherever I may die, / I know to what brown country…” | Sentences flow over line breaks, creating movement and continuity. |
| 🔚 Epistrophe | “My country! My country!” (implied) | Repetition at the ends of lines (implied structure) for emotional closure. |
| 💥 Hyperbole | “She pays us back threefold” | Deliberate exaggeration to show the land’s abundant rewards. |
| 🌄 Imagery | “sunburnt country,” “opal-hearted country” | Sensory language that vividly paints the Australian landscape. |
| 🙃 Irony | “Her beauty and her terror” | Highlights the unexpected contradiction between danger and beauty. |
| ⚖️ Juxtaposition | “droughts and flooding rains” | Places extremes side by side to stress the land’s unpredictability. |
| 🪞 Metaphor | “opal-hearted country” | Compares the country to an opal, rich in emotion and beauty. |
| 🔊 Onomatopoeia | “drumming of an army” | Mimics the sound of heavy rain through military imagery. |
| ♾️ Paradox | “Her beauty and her terror” | A contradiction that reveals deeper truth about Australia’s land. |
| ❤️ Personification | “Her pitiless blue sky” | Nature is given human qualities to create empathy and emotion. |
| 🔁 Repetition | “Core of my heart, my country!” | Repeated phrasing for emotional intensity and connection. |
| ✨ Symbolism | “Rainbow Gold,” “opal-hearted” | Physical images symbolize deeper ideas like beauty, love, and resilience. |
| 🎭 Tone | Entire poem | A loving, reverent, yet realistic tone about the land’s hardships and beauty. |
| 👁️ Visual Imagery | “jewel-sea,” “grey clouds gather,” “ring-barked forest” | Creates mental pictures that make the reader “see” the Australian environment. |
Themes: “My Country” by Dorothea Mackellar
🌏 Patriotism and National Identity: “My Country” by Dorothea Mackellar powerfully expresses a deep sense of patriotism and national identity. Mackellar draws a clear contrast between the gentle landscapes of England—“the love of field and coppice, of green and shaded lanes”—and the raw, rugged beauty of Australia. She proclaims, “My love is otherwise,” establishing a personal and passionate bond with her homeland. Her voice grows more intimate and emotional as she repeats, “Core of my heart, my country!” The poem resonates with pride and loyalty, presenting Australia not just as a place, but as a core part of her identity. It became a defining patriotic work, reflecting a national pride deeply rooted in land, climate, and character.
🌿 Nature’s Beauty and Brutality: “My Country” by Dorothea Mackellar vividly portrays the majestic and often violent natural world of Australia. She uses striking imagery like “sunburnt country,” “sapphire-misted mountains,” and “jewel-sea” to highlight its beauty, while also acknowledging the harsh realities: “Of droughts and flooding rains,” and “Her pitiless blue sky.” The contrast between “Her beauty and her terror” underscores the wild duality of the land. Mackellar doesn’t shy away from nature’s cruelty but embraces it as essential to Australia’s unique spirit. This honesty and intensity set her poem apart from idealized portrayals of nature, presenting it as both magnificent and merciless.
❤️ Emotional Connection to Homeland: “My Country” by Dorothea Mackellar explores the emotional depth of her bond to the Australian landscape. Her words reflect not only admiration but also belonging. She speaks of Australia as part of her heart: “Core of my heart, my country!” The final lines express a spiritual attachment that transcends death: “Wherever I may die, I know to what brown country my homing thoughts will fly.” This connection is deeply personal, and Mackellar frames the land as inseparable from her own being. Her emotions are not tied to comfort or aesthetics, but to memory, identity, and a visceral love for the land itself.
🔥 Resilience and Survival: “My Country” by Dorothea Mackellar highlights the resilience required to survive in Australia’s often unforgiving climate. The poet acknowledges suffering—“we see the cattle die”—but emphasizes the hope and regeneration that follow: “we can bless again the drumming of an army, the steady, soaking rain.” Mackellar sees in the land a cycle of destruction and rebirth, captured in “She pays us back threefold” and “the filmy veil of greenness that thickens as we gaze.” This theme of resilience reflects a national character forged through hardship and a deep respect for the land’s power to both take and give.
Literary Theories and “My Country” by Dorothea Mackellar
| Theory | Application to Poem | Textual Reference |
| 🌿 Romanticism | Emphasizes intense emotion and a spiritual connection to nature. Mackellar expresses deep love for Australia’s wild landscape, aligning with Romantic ideals of the sublime. | “I love a sunburnt country, / A land of sweeping plains” |
| 🇦🇺 Nationalism / Postcolonialism | Celebrates Australian identity and separates it from British influence. The poet embraces the uniqueness of Australia in contrast to the “ordered woods and gardens” of England. | “I know but cannot share it, / My love is otherwise” |
| 🌏 Eco-criticism | Examines the interdependence between humans and nature. The poem illustrates nature’s extremes—drought, flood, regrowth—showing its power and unpredictability. | “Of droughts and flooding rains”, “The filmy veil of greenness / That thickens as we gaze” |
| 👩🌾 Feminist Theory | The land is personified as a woman (“her”), reinforcing gendered connections between nature and femininity. This can reflect nurturing, pain, and beauty all at once. | “Her beauty and her terror”, “Core of my heart, my country!” |
Critical Questions about “My Country” by Dorothea Mackellar
❓🌿 1. How does “My Country” by Dorothea Mackellar reflect Romantic ideals through its portrayal of the Australian landscape?
In “My Country”, Dorothea Mackellar channels key Romantic ideals by expressing a deep emotional and spiritual connection to the natural world, specifically the Australian landscape. Romanticism often celebrates the sublime—nature’s beauty mixed with danger—and this is vividly illustrated in Mackellar’s description of “her beauty and her terror – / The wide brown land for me!”. The use of vivid natural imagery like “sapphire-misted mountains” and “hot gold hush of noon” captures the grandeur and awe of the landscape, evoking a personal reverence for nature that lies at the heart of Romantic poetry. Rather than idealizing order and control, Mackellar praises the wild, unpredictable, and even dangerous elements of nature. Her love for this “sunburnt country” is intense and emotional, aligning her with the Romantic tradition of nature as a source of identity, inspiration, and spiritual truth.
❓🇦🇺 2. In what ways does “My Country” by Dorothea Mackellar serve as a nationalist response to British colonial attitudes?
Dorothea Mackellar’s “My Country” is a powerful nationalist statement that challenges colonial preferences for England’s temperate and cultivated landscapes. The poem begins with a nod to this English ideal: “The love of field and coppice, / Of green and shaded lanes…”—an image of pastoral England. However, Mackellar firmly states “I know but cannot share it, / My love is otherwise,” rejecting this tradition in favor of a landscape that reflects Australia’s unique character. By listing its rugged features—“sweeping plains,” “droughts and flooding rains,” and “ragged mountain ranges”—she positions Australia as a land worthy of admiration and belonging in its own right. Through this, the poem asserts an independent national identity, redefining beauty and value through an Australian lens. The use of personal declaration (“I love…”) repeated throughout adds to the sense of patriotic emotion and cultural reclamation.
❓🌏 3. How does “My Country” by Dorothea Mackellar explore the dual nature of Australia’s environment from an eco-critical perspective?
Viewed through an eco-critical lens, “My Country” by Dorothea Mackellar offers a balanced portrayal of the Australian environment as both nurturing and destructive. The poem embraces nature’s extremes, emphasizing how Australians live in constant negotiation with the land’s power. For instance, she acknowledges “Her pitiless blue sky, / When sick at heart, around us, / We see the cattle die”—a stark reference to the impact of drought. Yet, this hardship is followed by nature’s redemption: “the grey clouds gather… the steady, soaking rain.” This cyclical view of destruction and renewal reveals a deep respect for the land’s authority and unpredictability. Rather than taming or exploiting the environment, the poem suggests Australians must accept and adapt to its rhythms. Mackellar’s depiction of the “filmy veil of greenness” that returns after rain highlights the regenerative beauty of the earth, affirming a theme of environmental resilience and coexistence.
❓👩🌾 4. What role does gendered language play in “My Country” by Dorothea Mackellar, and how might a feminist reading interpret this?
In “My Country”, Dorothea Mackellar repeatedly uses feminine language to describe the Australian land, referring to it as “her,” which invites a feminist interpretation of the poem. This gendered personification imbues the land with qualities traditionally associated with femininity: nurturing, beauty, and emotional intensity, but also volatility and suffering. For example, the land is described with tenderness (“Her beauty and her terror”) but also shown in pain and hardship (“Her pitiless blue sky” and “we see the cattle die”). A feminist reading may explore how Mackellar projects both power and vulnerability onto the land, presenting it as a maternal presence—tough yet deeply loved. The phrase “Core of my heart, my country!” suggests an intimate, almost familial bond, where the poet’s love mirrors the unconditional devotion often idealized in motherhood. This framing highlights how landscapes, like women, have historically been romanticized, revered, and subjected to both affection and control.
Literary Works Similar to “My Country” by Dorothea Mackellar
- “I Hear America Singing” by Walt Whitman
➤ Similar in patriotic tone, it celebrates the people and identity of a nation through vivid imagery and personal pride. - “The Man from Snowy River” by Banjo Paterson
➤ Shares a love for the Australian landscape and national character, highlighting courage and connection to the land. - “To My Native Land” by Henry Louis Vivian Derozio
➤ Expresses emotional attachment and reverence for one’s homeland, similar to Mackellar’s personal devotion to Australia.
Representative Quotations of “My Country” by Dorothea Mackellar
| 🌟 Quotation | 📌 Context in Poem | 📚 Theoretical Perspective |
| “I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains,” | Opening of the second stanza, expressing passionate love for Australia’s unique landscape. | Postcolonialism – Celebrates a distinct national identity separate from British influence. |
| “Of droughts and flooding rains.” | Following line, emphasizing Australia’s extreme and unpredictable climate. | Eco-criticism – Focuses on the relationship between humans and Australia’s wild climate. |
| “Her beauty and her terror – the wide brown land for me!” | Highlights the emotional paradox of the land’s simultaneous danger and beauty. | Romanticism – Explores emotional depth and sublime beauty in the natural world. |
| “Core of my heart, my country!” | Refrain repeated in two stanzas to intensify emotional connection to the homeland. | Nationalism – Asserts patriotic pride and belonging through repetition and imagery. |
| “The love of field and coppice… I know but cannot share it, my love is otherwise.” | Opening stanza; contrasts English scenery with her deep preference for Australia. | Cultural Identity – Emphasizes personal and cultural divergence from the colonial norm. |
| “The drumming of an army, the steady, soaking rain.” | Symbolic reference to life-giving rain following hardship, likened to a military force. | Symbolism – Uses metaphor to equate nature’s renewal with survival and hope. |
| “She pays us back threefold – over the thirsty paddocks…” | Acknowledges nature’s harshness but celebrates its power to renew and restore. | Resilience Theory – Reflects nature’s ability to recover and reward endurance. |
| “The sapphire-misted mountains, the hot gold hush of noon.” | Illustrates the physical beauty and climate of the Australian environment. | Imagism – Sharp visual imagery that captures sensory experiences of the land. |
| “An opal-hearted country, a wilful, lavish land –” | Summarizes the poem’s portrayal of Australia as emotionally rich and complex. | Psycho-geography – Depicts land as reflecting internal emotional landscapes. |
| “Wherever I may die, I know to what brown country my homing thoughts will fly.” | Final lines of the poem; captures the eternal bond with Australia, even in death. | Spiritual Geography – Ties emotional and metaphysical identity to physical homeland. |
Suggested Readings: “My Country” by Dorothea Mackellar
- Mackellar, Dorothea, and Harry John Weston. My country. Omnibus Books, 2010.
- Elliott, Brian. “Australian Literature and Australian Literacy.” The Australian Quarterly, vol. 18, no. 4, 1946, pp. 67–79. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/20631405. Accessed 28 July 2025.
- Arnold, John. “Studying Australian Literature: A Guide to Some Recent Sources.” World Literature Today, vol. 67, no. 3, 1993, pp. 533–39. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/40149349. Accessed 28 July 2025.