Patriotism

I've been naturalized. I don't really like the term, it sounds like I got neutered. The ceremony was over in an hour and we forgot to charge the camera batteries and just at the moment I got my cert, the battery died. Anyway I came into work the next morning and there on my desk trying to be discreet was the Australian flag, and an email from my neighbour congratulating me, reminding me to rhyme talk and do away with my 'yankee' talk.(because I call cookies, cookies and not biscuits, sweets - candy and not lollies, and I used faucet once to describe a tap)

Then at 1030am, morning tea time, my team mates huddled behind me and were very proud of themselves while they presented me a laminated infamous national poem and a lamington to mark my new status. I was very happy and bemused. Australians take the whole patriotism so seriously and so proudly. They have a 'mateship' and a deep love for their country and the community. I don't think I've ever felt such national pride before, and their enthusiasm is very contagious.




My Country
Dorothea Mackellar

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!

A stark white ring-barked forest
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.