The sunburned country

MY COUNTRY
Dorothea McKellar

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!

The stark white ring-barked forests, 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.








We used to see clouds. It is not Christmas yet but the drought is really biting.
Of course we city folk hardly know that we're alive, we just worry about our poor little gardens.
It's not like that at all for the people on the land, it is heart breaking.
There are so many fires around our state that the sun is an eerie red some days from the smoke filled sky.

Before Australia became so urbanised, they had a song that went like this
"Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile,..."
I guess the country people will still do that.
As my old Dad used to say, "Don, the apples will grow again"
Good Stuff!

Gas Light Market

We are only 8 days into summer and it is about 9pm.
It's a hot night and the air is slightly acrid with the smell of the fires already blazing in Victoria, our state.
On a lighter note, before talking more about the fires, here are some photos taken on Wednesday evening at the Queen Victoria Market. The inner Melbourne Holt's were out
in force, we were early to avoid the long queues at the various food stalls.










Large parts of Australia are in the grip of serious drought and our "backyard" is threatened with the most serious bushfires since Black Friday 1939.
Several fires started by lightning strikes and other fires lit by the ubiquitous nutters who take advantage of the conditions to light even more, have joined up into a massive fire front. It is expected to be hot for the next two days and if the wind gets up as well a lot of people in Victoria are going too be in a lot of trouble.
I can still remember a preacher using the Black Fridays fires to illustrate his sermon. H e said something like this, "A little group of timber cutters, who were helping fight the terrible fires on that day were suddenly caught in a wind change. The monstrous fire tuned and roared like an express train toward the men. There appeared to be no hope for them whatsoever. The fire roared around them, and miraculously swept on passed them, and they were still alive.
How had this happened? The men were fortunate to find themselves on a spot where the fire had already burned". The preacher went on to say that when Jesus Christ was on the cruel cross, the fires of God's judgment for sin fell on Him, the only one who had never sinned. When we receive Christ as our own Saviour, we are "In Christ"
We are in a place where the fire has already burned, and we are saved.
That's the exact place where I am and want to be, "In Christ"