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This Day Tonight: Dorothea Mackellar's 'My country' as a song, 1967

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Old woman lays in bed beside younger woman
This Day Tonight: Dorothea Mackellar's 'My country' as a song, 1967

SUBJECTS: English, History

YEARS: 7–8


Do you know a poem with the line 'I love a sunburnt country'?

The poem is 'My country' by Dorothea Mackellar. Find out what inspired Mackellar to write this famous poem and how she felt about teenager Christine Roberts basing a song on it.

This is a black-and-white clip from a 1967 current affairs program This Day Tonight.


Things to think about

  1. 1.The lines 'I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains, of ragged mountain ranges, of droughts and flooding rains' are from 'My country', which Dorothea Mackellar wrote between 1904 and 1908. What do these lines suggest to you about the poet's view of the Australian landscape?
  2. 2.Why did Dorothea Mackellar write 'My country'? How does Mackellar describe the poem's relationship to England? Christine Roberts starts her song with the well-recognised second verse of the poem. Why might she have chosen to start it at this point? Compare the lyrics in the music video with the representation of Australia in Russell Drysdale's paintings.
  3. 3.What is the central message of the poem 'My country'? Do you think Christine Roberts is successful in getting this across? Why or why not? Locate and read the complete poem. Knowing what you now know about the reasons Mackellar wrote the poem, explain the first verse. What words or phrases does she use to capture Australia's variable weather?
  4. 4.Can you think of a music video that, to you, strongly represents today's Australia? Find and study it carefully to see how the lyrics and other elements of the video work together to create an effect. Create a short video or audio response to the Mackellar poem, the Roberts clip, or both. It could be a completely new creative piece, or an interview or send-up.



Date of broadcast: 2 Nov 1967


Copyright

Metadata © Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Education Services Australia Ltd 2012 (except where otherwise indicated). Digital content © Australian Broadcasting Corporation (except where otherwise indicated). Video © Australian Broadcasting Corporation (except where otherwise indicated). All images copyright their respective owners. Text © Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Education Services Australia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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