Author(s): Deborah FitzGerald

Memoir

The first definitive biography of Australian poet and writer Dorothea Mackellar, author of the celebrated poem ‘My Country.’ 'I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains…’ Though many Australians know lines from Dorothea Mackellar’s classic poem ‘My Country’ by heart, very little has been written about the poet’s extraordinary life. From her childhood and youth in Sydney’s Point Piper and Pittwater, to discovering her love for the Australian landscape on her brother’s farm in Gunnedah, Dorothea engaged with the intellectual elite of Sydney and abroad as she embarked on a decades long literary career that saw her linked to some of the leading lights of her day. A keen traveller, Dorothea visited Japan, Egypt, Fiji, New Zealand and the United States between longer stints in the literary heart of London, where she socialised with the likes of Joseph Conrad and Ezra Pound. At home, she counted among her friends the famed Sydney Herald war correspondent, Charles Bean, and journalistic royalty in the form of the Fairfax family. Battling against a masculine tradition of Australian bush poetry led by the likes of Banjo Paterson and Henry Lawson, Dorothea Mackellar boldly carved out a place for herself, leaving an indelible mark on the Australian imagination. Now, for the first time, the poet's unconventional life story is told – a hidden gem of Australian history, and a tale of one woman’s extraordinary passion for her poetry, her family, and her country.