Deborah Fitzgerald on 'Her Sunburnt Country The Extraordinary Literary Life of Dorothea Mackellar'

Good Reading Podcast

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. Battling against a masculine tradition of Australian bush poetry led by 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. In this episode Gregory Dobbs chats to Deborah Fitzgerald about the boon and the burden of Dorothea Mackellar's most famous verse and the deep feeling she harboured for Australia and its landscape, and the remarkable contribution Dorothea Mackellar made to Australian literature.