La Austrialia del Espiritu Santo...

...The Austrian Land of the Holy Spirit

These were the words when the Spanish navigator

Pedro Fernández de Quirós on one of his

voyeges discovered the southern continent.

In our home school today, we will be reciting this famous Australian poem ~

MY COUNTRY

A poem 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!

The tragic ringbarked forests,

Stark white beneath 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 crimson 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.

Dorothea Mackellar wrote the poem during a stay on a family farm near Maitland in the state of New South Wales, after witnessing the breaking of a drought.

We will be singing our National Anthem,

listening to Australian folk songs,

drawing our flag,

learning about captain Arthur Phillip,

appreciating one my favourite Aussie artists ~

Pro hart

and we'll also be hanging washing,

cleaning toilets,

doing dishes,

and simply living.

To all my fellow Australians, where ever you are today,

enjoy this day set aside to remind us of how blessed we are to

live in the great south land of the Holy Spirit.