My Country – an Australia Day poem …

… with apologies to Dorothea Mackellar

I love a sunburnt country

A land of lunches long

Of pineapples and mangoes,

Of wine and sun and song.

I love the council workers,

I love the lifeguards too,

The farmers and the fishermen-

Keep doing what you do.

I love our ancient dreamtime

Our early history

Preserved through art and stories

Passed down respectfully.

Our country beckons cultures

From every distant land

To welcome, and to learn from

To share and understand.

I love that we join forces

When nature takes her toll

We mourn each others’ losses

Then we let the good times roll.

A people-driven country,

A land of speech so free

(No matter how intelligent

Or dumb that speech may be.)

I love our wacky wildlife

Unique and loved and feared,

The crocs and sharks and wallabies

The deadly and the weird.

I love a vocal country

We’re not afraid to fight

To call for change and progress-

Our democratic right.

I love a sporting country

The underdog revered

The referee is questioned

And the champions loudly cheered.

I’m grateful to my country

For opportunity,

For my children to be healthy,

To be learned, to be free.

Core of my heart, my country!

With all of me I love

The teeming seas beneath us

The open sky above

But more than that, the people

Who make this country great.

Let’s crack a can for Straya Day

And say “good onya, mate!”

I have included links to the original source of images in this post which are not mine. If I have inadvertently used something I should not have please contact me and I will immediately remove it.