When climate strikes, one part of the country floods, another part burns and such national disasters have a catastrophic effect. For millions of years our first Australians lived in harmony with the environment, well aware of the dangers of the landscape around them. The recent events have exposed, the heartache and tragedy we suffer when nature hands out a cruel blow. Our harsh environmnent is completely indifferent to human beings who try to impose their will on it. Our early settlers did not let this worry them, as they soon discovered that to survive in such a harsh environment they had to look after one another.
Full praise to all the volunteers. This is a necessity dating back to the early days of settlement. Whenever there was some kind of natural disaster, volunteers dealt with it. Even today, shire and city councils do not have the budget to hire many paid emergency staff. Instead, each state has organised its own SES made up of volunteers. Outside of the cities the inhabitants have learnt that to survive they have to look after one another, and this now happens in the cities as the country has become highly urbanised.
One of our early settlers, a young Australian woman, summed up this national sentiment. Sometime before 1908, while on a visit to England, a homesick young Australian woman put her thoughts down on paper in a poem she called 'Core of My Heart'. This famous poem (later retitled 'My Country') is believed to have been directly inspired by Dorothea Mackellar's experience of life on the land, and her love of the Allyn River district.
From 1898 to 1901, the Mackellars owned Torryburn station, near East Gresford, NSW, during one of the region's driest times. East Gresford is on the main road to Maitland, 196ks north of Sydney. While holidaying at the property the family witnessed the breaking of a drought. In later life, Dorothea Mackellar recalled how, after the rain, the grass began to shoot across the parched, cracked soil of the paddocks and, as she watched from the verandah, the land to the horizon turned green before her eyes.
Dorothea Mackellar's iconic verse is now regarded by many Australians as the universal statement of our nation's connection to the land. This connection is intrinsic in the lifestyle of all Australians and was so much a strong connection with the Indigenous people. Now more than ever we have to learn to reduce our vulnerability to natural disasters.
Dorothea Mackellar dressed as one of the Graces for Mrs T.H. Kelly's Italian Red Cross Day tableaux at the Palace Theatre, 20 June 1918 by Glen Broughton
Photograph P1/Mackellar, Dorothea, ca. 1918 (BM)
Source: State Library of NSW
