AustLit

'Australia's most popular poem may be Dorothea Mackellar's 'My Country'. This lyrical expression of national consciousness was first printed in the London Spectator of 5 September 1908. Since then it has been published in two books of Dorothea Mackellar's verse; it has appeared, in one form or another, in most anthologies of Australian verse; in school primers; and it has received popular accolade on countless concert platforms, from the disciplined lips of numberless singing and reciting children, from the waving hands of a host of elocutioneers, and from the mouth of a lately popular American president.'