My Country

Dorothea Mackellar (text)

Andrew McLean (illus)

Omnibus Books, Australia: 2010

ISBN: 9781862917309

Genre: picture book, poetry

On a visit to England, a homesick Dorothea Mackellar wrote a poem expressing her love of Australia, despite its variable climate and harsh landscape. Originally titled Core of My Heart, the poem was later renamed and has become a well-recognised expression of the complexities of people's feelings for our great land.

Andrew McLean, who demonstrated his ability to capture the Australian landscape in A Year on Our Farm, has used his not inconsiderable talents to create images that reflect the intensity of Mackellar's feelings as well as the evoking the harsh beauty of Australia's landscape. The first pictures, capturing England's ‘green and shaded lanes' and ‘ordered woods and gardens' make an almost shocking contrast to the dry heat radiating off the page representing ‘a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains'. McLean manages to imbue his paintings with that sense of both love and hate that breaks the hearts of those working this difficult land ‘when sick at heart, around us, we see the cattle die' as well as the joy and gratitude that comes with the ‘steady, soaking rain'.

This poem is always going to be part of, should always be part of Australia's expression of who we are. It acknowledges the battle between humans and the land that tests and seasons our spirit. McLean has done McKellar proud in his interpretation of her best-known work. His illustrations enrich the reader's response to the lines and reflect the dichotomy of the Australian experience as expressed in My Country. This is an edition of the poem to cherish - give it as book prize, for a special achievement, or ‘just because'. Use it to help others understand and celebrate our ‘sunburnt country'.