Travel Theme : Brown

The wide brown land

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!
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.

Dorothea Mackeller

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Ailsa from “Where’s my backpack” gave us the theme “BROWN” this week. I knew immediately how I pictured brown. I live in Australia and the beautiful poem written by Dorothea Mackellar, My Country, speaks so eloquently of her yearning for this “wide brown land” when she lived in England and longed to come home to her country.

I was born in England but now I call Australia home

This song always moves me and brings a lump to my throat.

I have travelled far and wide through this great land and the hard drive on the computer is full of images, many of them brown. It was a difficult decision choosing just a few, but here is a gallery of  Australia in all its shades of brown.

Can you see Tawny frog-mouth?

Well camouflaged

Battered brown Akubras