Love of country

Say what you like about nuns and education (and I often do have a lot to say about it) but, along with love of God the nuns of my schooldays drummed into us love of our country.  There was a fair bit of fear of them involved which is an odd way to teach love.  But most of what they drummed into us has stuck.

I was born and bred in Australia and to this day, although I live in another country, I love Australia in a way that would make those nuns proud.

When horrible things happen in Oz I console myself with old classroom poems that I still remember, or to be more precise, lines from those poems because there are only a couple that I can remember from start to finish.  One of those poems, is by Australian poet Dorothea Mackellar 1885-1968.  Her family owned substantial properties in the Gunnedah district of New South Wales which currently has bushfires not far away.

These are the verses of "My Country" that sustain me.

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!

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.

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.

There are lines from another poem by the same poet (yes, she is a firm favourite of mine) titled "Colour" that comes to mind when the countryside gleams after a good downpour of rain.

Great saffron sunset clouds, and larkspur mountains,
And fenceless miles of plain,
And hillsides golden-green in that unearthly

Clear shining after rain;

Yesterday, when our skies changed colour to a weird, murky colour causing near darkness by mid afternoon, it was a  horrible and powerful reminder of those bushfires in Oz, a new level of awareness to us who live 2,000 kms from the danger zone.  Later in the day the sky turned almost orange but my camera simply refused to acknowledge the colour.    I can't imagine the horror for those who know there is fire coming towards them when their world changes colour.

I hope the horror doesn't continue for much longer and the hillsides are once again golden-green in that unearthly clear shining after rain.  But I fear for the future of Australia and what will be it's new normal because I'm sure it won't be the normal of it's past.