I had a bunch of girlfriends over for morning tea today; kind of a farewell-just-in-case-we-don't-come-back thing. I love my friends. A hundred came today, with approximately 5,000 children. It was cheerful and noisy and crowded and loving. I am going to miss these beautiful people.
I might even miss my house. If we move overseas and dispose of the boxes not earmarked to leave our shores, I might pine for some of those belongings.
Yet my heart is stirring for a New Thing. A look? Just a holiday? I don't think so. I think the New Thing is to be a Grand Adventure... a new way of looking, a new way of living.
But, oh, I am an Australian. This has been my home. My country. And today, I am enjoying the bittersweet joy of loving and being loved in this place. Of knowing that the comfortable and familiar is not all - but it is comfortable and familiar.
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.
Dorothea Mackellar
There's no comment that needs to be made because what you wrote is so perfect and lovey...
ReplyDeleteStill, I just want to add my "voice" and say that I understand that call to far flung places. I've set out on adventures and I've been tried and tested and made far better than I thought possible. I've met people along the way that have enriched my life and I can say that surely goodness & mercy will follow me all the days of my life. My cup, indeed, runneth over...
Happy thoughts and many prayers are with ya'll in these last few hurried days before departing on this grand adventure!
Just posted a long comment on the *Why* section and lost the lot 'cos I couldn't remember my password..doh...never mind.
ReplyDeleteYou sound as though you are all having a fantastic time !!
Love
Jane & Ron xx