My Country

I love a sunburnt country,

A land of open drains
Mid-urban sprawl expanded
For cost-accounting gains;
Broad, busy bulldozed acres
Once wastes of ferns and trees
How rapidly enriching
Investors overseas.

A nature-loving country
Beneath whose golden wattles
The creek is fringed with newspapers
And lined with broken bottles
Far in her distant outback
Still whose cities chafe
Find hidden pools where bathing
Is relatively safe.

A music-loving country
Where rings throughout the land
The jingle sweet enjoining
Devotion to the brand
O, hark the glad transistors
Hence midnight, dawn and noon
Cry forth her idols
A trifle out of tune.

Brave military pylons

That march over scenic hills;
Fair neon lights, extolling.
Paint, puppy food and pills.
I love her massive chimneys,
Production, profits, pride,
Interminably pouring.
Pollution high and wide.
A democratic country,
Where, safe from fear’s attacks,
Earth’s children all are equal
(Save yellows, browns and blacks)
Though Man in Space adventure,
Invade the planets nine,
What shall he find to equal
This sunburnt land of mine?

1. What experience is being described in each stanza? For example, stanza one focuses on the
experience of urban growth (urban growth means the development of suburbs and cities)
2. Label the following techniques in the poem
a) Rhetorical question
b) Visual imagery
c) Auditory imagery
d) Situational irony
e) Juxtaposition
f) Alliteration

3. How would you describe the poet’s tone, particularly when he says things like, “I love a
sunburnt country” and “What shall he find to equal this sunburnt land of mine”?
4. How does the poem demonstrate ONE negative experience the poet has witnessed in
Australia?