On Dorothea Mckellar's My Country Poem by Francis Duggan

One of Australia's all time great poems she did write
A poem many Aussies feel proud to recite
A poem that has moved migrant Aussies to tears
My Country will live on for centuries of years.

As a poet one can say that her equals are few
Of the nostalgia of the migrant Dorothea McKellar knew
She penned My Country in England of homesickness feeling down
The poem that assured her of literary renown.

A poem that in Aussie migrants awake memories
Of the Land of the waratahs and the gum trees
Of emu, echidna, koala and platypus, wombat and roo
Kookaburra, rosella, lyrebird, lorikeet and cockatoo.

On the great mountain ash trees the pied currawong
The dark birds it is said that have rain in their song
Sing out karrawang in the wind and the rain
The Aussie migrants are back in their home woods again.

In the outback many miles from the nearest big town
The drought stricken paddocks looking bare and brown
In McKellar's My Country the rural migrant Aussies see
The beauty they loved in their Homeland Country.

My Country from Dorothea McKellar's pen
A poem loved by Aussie migrant women and men
The migrants from the homeland may live far away
But nostalgia for what was with them seem to stay.