I love a Sunburnt Country

bymichelemarie

687 followers

5 years ago

Have you heard that poem, by Dorothea MacKellar?

‘My Country’

The second stanza is embedded in my memory, a little like the, Lord’s Prayer and the Hail Mary.

‘ I love a sunburnt country,

A land of sweeping plains,

of rugged 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!’

Well, a beautiful poem, I learnt to recite at school, a poem that made me proud to be an Australian.

We have had many terrible documented fires around Australia over the years, each one devastating with loss of homes, live stock, wild life and most importantly the loss of human lives. Times of destruction, loss of livelihood, loss of everything we hold dear.

Devastating and ferocious fires that carry no sympathy, no compassion, ruled only by its own ferociousness, fuelled by our grasses, our forest floors of twigs and dried under growth and changing winds,the heat and redness of red hot fire meant only to burn and destroy our lives and our country.

Will we rebuild?

Yes of course, because humans are resilient, calmly and determinedly. we will rebuild.

But prevented measures need to be, must be, put in place.

Clear the undergrowth, do our eucalyptus trees really burn so easily when they are green and healthy? No of course not, preventive measures need to be put in place, on a regular basis.

We need to consult and work together, bringing to the table, our Indigenius Australians, who have lived here for thousands of years, also modern scientists, also agricultural and naturalists, so many voices need to be heard, so we find a better, hopefully best outcome.

I never want to see again so much devastation, when so much more could be done to save not only Australia, but the world.

We cannot stop bush fires from occurring , but I truly believe we can minimise their impact.

Michele