Of Droughts and Flooding Rains

 

My Country

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!

A stark white ring-barked forest
All tragic to 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 warm dark 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

 

Poor Maryborough went under last night. The townspeople have been ordered to evacuate. Their makeshift barricade in the middle of the CBD couldn't withstand the flooding waters. There's still a 14 year old girl missing since yesterday morning, but in true Aussie fashion, the townspeople are taking it all in their stride.

Tropical Cyclone Tiffany is hitting the far north Queensland coast today (Cairns and above). The Bureau of Meteorology is waiting to see whether it will head South towards us, or continue in a notherly fashion towards the Northern Territory.

We have the strangest weather going on, but it is also no surprise, given we are Australia! Months ago they predicted that Queensland (or the South East Corner, anyway) was due to have roughly six months of rain. We are about two months into that so far. Looks like Autumn and Winter may be wet as well. As Summers go, it's been a nice reprieve from the usual scorching temperatures that we normally get at least!