Photographer : Terry Fyffe |
Last night i was lucky enough to be a 'handbag' for a male friend who was invited to a musical tribute for the Royal Flying Doctors at the City Recital Hall in Sydney. The night was in one word 'brilliant'.
For those who don't know much about the Royal Flying Doctors - they are a not-for-profit charitable service providing aeromedical emergency and primary health care services together with communication and education assistance to people who live, work and travel in regional and remote Australia.
Established in 1928 and developed on a national basis in the 1930s, the Service soon provided not only emergency medical aid to the people of the Inland, but also a comprehensive health care and community service - 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Last night was a celebration for the incredible work they do - international artists volunteered their time, voices and instruments and put on one hell of a performance. By far the most moving was the closing act which was an operatic version of Dorothea MacKellar's poem 'I love a sunburnt country'. Every hair on my body was standing upright and this overwhelming pride of being Australian swept through me from head to toe. I want to put the call out there that this poem should be our national anthem - what do you think?
Here it is - read it and let the words seep inside you.
I LOVE A SUNBURNT 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 drought 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 tragic ring-barked forests
Stark white beneath 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 crimson 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.
