Of droughts and flooding rains

 There is a poem by Dorothea McKellar, "My Country" which is probably still taught to children in school here.  I think I endured it every year through the primary school. For those of you who don't know it I have copied it (legally) below. 
It is the second verse which most children know. When I was taught it the first verse was  usually ignored - and, more often than not, the last four were as well.  The Senior Cat thought otherwise but undoubtedly struggled to teach children in a small "bush school" what "field and coppice" and the like actually meant. The children in that far off place were used to "paddocks" and "saltbush". 
It isn't a poem I particularly like but the Senior Cat quoted the second verse yesterday just after speaking to my brother and SIL. They left yesterday. Their plane was delayed because of the weather in the eastern states. My brother said it was the roughest trip he had ever done. He was clearly relieved to be on the ground - wet though it might have been. 
But, they couldn't get home. They ended up spending the night with my niece and her family. The drought had turned to floods. Almost a metre of water had been measured over the bridge on the road leading into the town where they live. People were being asked to stay off the roads if possible.  My brother wasn't going to risk travelling if they had somewhere to stay. It also meant he could help my nephew-in-law pump water from their property.
The "climate change" doomsayers told us there wouldn't be any rain for at least six months. They told us that when it came there would not be much of it. The Bureau of Meteorology was a little more positive than the doomsayers but they didn't forecast this. The eldest member of a farming family I know was even more positive,
    "I tell you Cat that mob don't know what they are talking about. It will rain. It always does in the end."
Perhaps we should be listening to farmers who have lived for nearly a century? 

Here's "My Country" 


The love of field and coppice
Of green and shaded lanes,
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins.
Strong love of grey-blue distance,
Brown streams and soft, dim skies
I know, but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror
The wide brown land for me!

The stark white ring-barked forests,
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon,
Green tangle of the brushes
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops,
And ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When, sick at heart, around us
We see the cattle die
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the rainbow gold,
For flood and fire and famine
She pays us back threefold.
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze ...

An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand
though Earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.

**

Dorothea Mackeller