The Way We Were
Sequicentenary of Gunnedah 1856 - 2006

Dorothea: My Country

No poem epitomised the Australian landscape more than My Country (I love a sunburnt country ...).

It was written early in the 20th century by Dorothea Mackellar (1885-1968), who had strong family connections with the Gunnedah district.

Whether she wrote My Country during one or more of her visits to the family properties near Gunnedah has always been a matter of conjecture.

A great friend and neighbour of Dorothea’s claimed that, before her death, Dorothea had told her that she had written My Country during a visit to Kurrumbede, the family’s main holding in the Gunnedah district.

But others say that it was written at Torry­burn, in the Hunter Valley, another family property.
One report says that the poem was written in England in 1904, after a tennis match in which an English naval friend had been praising England to the skies.

My Country was first published in The Spectator, in England, under the title Core Of My Heart. Later it was published in The Sydney Mail (October 21, 1908) and in The Bulletin (April 27, 1911), just before the release of Dorothea’s first book of poetry, The Closed Door And Other Verses.

Three other books of poetry were published – The Witch Maid (1914), Dreamharbour (1923) and Fancy Dress (1927).

The Mackellar family was one of the most influential in the colony in the late 1800s. Dorothea’s father, Charles Kinnaird Mackellar, was a doctor of medicine with a practice in Rose Bay, Sydney, and later became a prominent parliamentarian.

He advised the NSW Government on hygiene and delinquent children and was one of the driving forces in the establishment of the North Head Quarantine Station and the Prince Henry Hospital.

In 1885 he became a Member of the State Legislative Council and after Federation, he was elected to the Senate in 1903.

He was knighted in 1912 and appointed a Knight Commander in 1916. He died in 1926, aged 82.

Dorothea’s mother, Marion Buckland, was a member of one of Sydney’s wealthiest ­families.

There were three boys in the Mackellar family – Keith, who was killed in the Boer War, Eric and ­Malcolm.

Eric managed the Torryburn property and was a NSW representative polo player.

Malcolm managed the family property, Kurrumbede, on the Blue Vale Road, Gunnedah. The property was purchased at the great Burburgate Station auction on October 1905, when 47,000 acres of freehold land was sold in 58 blocks.

The Mackellars bought four blocks, a total of 6086 acres, for an average of three pounds an acre.
Malcolm served in World War 1 as an officer and after the war married Enid Wolfe. In 1933 the Mackellars arranged a garden party at Kurrumbede to assist the families of World War 1 Diggers. More than 2000 people attended the function.

For seven years, Malcolm employed Andrew (Boy) Charlton, Australia’s wonder swimmer of the 1920s, as a jackaroo.

The two were close friends and Boy Charlton was working on Kurrumbede in the lead-up period to the 1924 Paris Olympics and the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam. He often trained and swam with Gunnedah locals in the Namoi River.

The family also owned The Rampadells, on the opposite side of the river to Kurrumbede. One of Dorothea’s poems was Burning Off (They’re burning off at The Rampadells ...).

Malcolm Mackellar sold Kurrumbede to Arthur Sulman in 1939, the family moving to a home in the mountains west of Windsor.

As a young woman, Dorothea Mackellar travelled widely throughout Europe, Asia and South America.

While living in London in 1913, she fell in love with a poet named Patrick Chalmers, a wealthy banker. At that time, she was 28. They agreed to become engaged and Dorothea returned to Australia to seek her parents’ permission to marry.

But war broke out and her letters to Patrick, telling him that her parents had agreed to their marriage, never arrived – and Patrick married another woman.

Dorothea never married. She died on January 14, 1968, aged 82.