MY Poem from 2011 Happy Australia Day Tomorrow

My Country
The love of field and pruning
Of green tree shaded lanes
Of pommie woods and gardens
Is the backpackers domain
Putting up with grey-blue distance
Brown streams and that low sky
Is nice to sometimes visit
But we could pass it by

I love a sunburnt country
Across the great western plains
Of bushwalkers mountain ranges
Of droughts and flooding rains
I love our far horizons
I love the Bar Beach sea
The beauty and the terror
The wide brown land for me

A stark white ring-barked forest
The loggers lop in tune
The sapphire misted mountains
The midday sun breaks through
Annoying spikey shrubs
Lantana and pesky weeds
A bunch of 40 dollar natives
A protea is all you need

Core of our soul, our country
The levelling blue sky
One minute cattle are dying
But then the grey clouds gather
And we can dance again
That sound on tin roofs clapping
The steady soaking rain

Core of their soul, their country
Land of the Rainbow snake
For flood and fire and famine
The dreaming stories make
Sand through the hand is poured
Lingiari was his name
The greenness will return
When they the land can claim

An opal hearted country
A willful, lavish land
We celebrate Australia
With coasters and board shorts
The flag we hold in hand
Brawls, beer and Hot 100
Disrupt our reflective or family time
We revel in the ANZAC
And sadly 'turn the boats around'