Pallid pledge or patriotic poetry? Why Australia needs a unifying national declaration

Cleaning out my junk from their North Ringwood house recently, I found a book of old poems in a red binder. As a kid, inspired by Roald Dahl and Australian bush poetry, I had taken to writing rhymes. On the first page is a poem titled “Australia,” dated 30 August 1988 — I was eight years old. It reads:

I love a sunburnt country, with floods and pouring rains/ With lots of trees and bushes, and big brown open plains / Koalas and kangaroos this country has got / And snakes with big blue yellow red and green and purple spots/ The blossom blooms in springtime and snow falls down in winter/ And with big brown trees you might just get a splinter.

There is a “copyright” symbol at the end (and on every page, and the front cover, just for good measure), which seems rich given my mimicry of Dorothea Mackellar’s “My Country.” Read more.