[Editor: A poem published in The Australian Worker (Sydney), 15 April 1925.]
Australia! My Own Dear Land.
Australia is my own dear land,
The land where I was born,
Where the kookaburra’s laughter
Is heard at early dawn!
Where wild flowers, all, the wattle bloom
With tinted beads of gold,
The blue of distant ranging hills
Are lovely to behold.
Australia is my own dear land!
I love her green blue sea,
Her native birds of plumage gay,
That fly from tree to tree;
I love the good grey kangaroo,
The wallaby and bear,
The emu, and the lyre bird
So beautiful and fair.
Australia, where, the waratah
Blooms on the green hillside,
The valleys where the tall gums grow
And little brooklets glide;
The pretty native heather bell —
A lovely sight to see —
The ringtail ’possum where he plays,
How dear they are to me!
IVY JANAS.
Yan Yan Gurt, V.
Source:
The Australian Worker (Sydney, NSW), 15 April 1925, p. 5
Editor’s notes:
gay = happy, joyous, carefree (may also mean well-decorated, bright, attractive) (in modern times it may especially refer to a homosexual, especially a male homosexual; may also refer to something which is no good, pathetic, useless)
’possum = an opossum or “possum”, a tree-dwelling marsupial species native to Australia; opossums are actually those animals of the Didelphimorphia order of marsupials (which are colloquially known as “possums”), whilst the term “possums” technically refers to those animals of the suborder Phalangeriformes, of the Diprotodontia order of marsupials; however, the two are often confused as being the same animal; the confusion arises from when Joseph Banks (the botanist with Captain Cook’s expedition) thought the Australian marsupial was an opossum, as it looked similar to the American opossum
V. = an abbreviation of Victoria, Australia (colony from 1851, state from 1901)
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