Australia - The Magnificent Sunburnt Country

Just as Dorothea Mackellar once penned to paper words that would become a poetic emblem of our "sunburnt country", Australians are all too aware of how magnificent our natural (and urban) landscapes are. And the one thing we (probably) all have in common? The desire to take in its formidable beauty by land, sea and in the air. Here are the first two stanzas from Mackellar's iconic poem.

The love of field and coppice,

Tim Wimborne / Via abc.net.au

Of green and shaded lanes.

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Of ordered woods and gardens

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Is running in your veins,

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Strong love of grey-blue distance

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Brown streams and soft dim skies

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I know but cannot share it,

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My love is otherwise.

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I love a sunburnt country,

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A land of sweeping plains,

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Of ragged mountain ranges,

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Of droughts and flooding rains.

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I love her far horizons,

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I love her jewel-sea,

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Her beauty and her terror -

Emma Birdsey / Via science.unsw.edu.au

The wide brown land for me!

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