My Country- A story

The Australian poem My Country (Dorothea Mackellar) written as a short story for my high school literature class.

My Country- Dorothea Mackellar

You can feel the thick green shrubs that occupy the never-ending fields, the remarkably tall trees that cast cool shadows down on the bushes that surround the trunks, making neat pathways that you could walk in if you only tried. You can feel everything as if it’s a part of you, from the grey-blue horizons to the brown running streams that show the dim reflection of the sky. I experience this, I know this, and it’s impossible to explain it, but I love it all nonetheless.

  It’s what many call a ‘sunburnt’ country due to the endless deserts and sweeping plains, but it’s much more than that. It has ragged mountain ranges that lift up so high you can see them from kilometers away. It’s a country where the center can be in an everlasting drought, and yet flooding rains are crashing down around it. You can stare out into the distance and it will appear to never end until you reach the sea, shimmering like jewels with the rays of the sun. There’s nothing more beautiful, or terrifying than this wide, brown land.

  The pale ring-barked trees look sorrowful under the soft beams of the moon. Yet the sapphire mountains covered in mist are still a sight to cherish as the golden sun begins to rise, bringing heat to the soundless break of day. The new light reveals tangles of green tree canopies, and within them lianas lithely coiling towards the shining sun. On tree-tops, above where anyone can see, orchids cover the leaves while a thick blanket of ferns lay on all portions of the dark, rich soil.

  There’s nothing that I hold greater to my heart than this country. I love the pitiless blue sky that looks down on us as ill cattle fall, for at the end of the day, when the grey clouds gather, we can rejoice with the falling of rain.

  This is my home, my passion. The deserts full of green and blue, bringing it to life, and when the wrath of nature descends upon the land, whether that be from floods, fire or famines; it rebuilds itself to be even more beautiful than the time before. You may watch the parched paddocks and believe that there’s no hope, but with patience and time the once dried up ground will sow the seeds again, and overpowering greenness will grow just as before.

  With opals to be found within its depths, this land grows more lavish, and more willful than any other I could imagine. Those of you who have not had the chance to feel what I have, you could not understand that although this world has many places filled with remarkable sights, none of that matters to me. For wherever I may take my final breath, whatever land that will be, I know that my thoughts will always return here, to my home, my place, my country.