Her Sunburnt Country
The Extraordinary Literary Life of Dorothea Mackellar
The biography of Dorothea Mackellar illuminates the life of a poet who gave Australia arguably the best known and most loved poem ever written. ‘My Country’ is sometimes referred to as ‘I love a Sunburnt Country’ after its most famous line. It continues to resonate across time, celebrating Australia’s unique geography and something more emotive – a deep spiritual connection to the land.
“FitzGerald has emerged with an objective and illuminating portrait of the privileged, contradictory and occasionally very unhappy life of Mackellar, as well as her legacy.”
“This is an engaging tale of a national icon.”
“FitzGerald has emerged with an objective and illuminating portrait.” Read the review by The Guardian’s Paul Daley below.
Listen to ABC Radio National’s legendary journalist Philip Adams’ interview with Deborah FitzGerald below.
Listen to ABC Radio’s popular presenter Indira Naidoo’s interview with Deborah FitzGerald below.
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About the Author
Deborah FitzGerald graduated in 2022 with a Doctor of Arts from the University of Sydney after completing her thesis, In Search of Dorothea: A biography of Australian poet Dorothea Mackellar. During the course of the doctorate, she won the 2021 Dame Leonie Kramer Prize in Australian Poetry and the 2019 Thomas Henry Coulson Scholarship. FitzGerald is also a senior journalist, editor and writer who has worked across major media organisations including the ABC, Channel Nine and News Corp. Her first book, Sophie’s Boys, was published in 2018.
While the poem ‘My Country’ has become an Australian anthem, Isobel Marion Dorothea Mackellar remains elusive. Little has been written of her life, her warm intelligence, her passion for the creative arts, the origins of her political activism, her courage to live on her own terms outside the strictly prescribed roles society demanded of women of that period, and her close family ties.
From her childhood and youth in Sydney’s Point Piper to discovering her love for the Australian landscape on the family farms in the Hunter Valley and later 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.
A keen world traveller, Dorothea visited countries including Japan, Egypt, Fiji, Indonesia, Malaysia Sri Lanka, Canada, South America, the United States and Europe at a time when journey by sea was long and arduous. She was a beautiful, sophisticated, multi-lingual woman and early feminist working in a man’s world. She spent longer stints at in the literary heart of London, where she socialised with the likes of Joseph Conrad. At home, she counted among her friends the famed Sydney Herald war correspondent, Charles Bean, and female literary contemporaries such as Ethel Turner and Dame Mary Gilmore.
She lived in a time of unprecedented political and social change with the forging of nationhood through Federation, the fight for a woman’s right to vote, and the devastating impact of the First World War.
Her romantic life remains mysterious. She never married and eventually committed herself to her elderly parents. Her friendship and collaboration with fellow writer and actor Ruth Bedford seems pivotal to her most productive years. She was a woman ahead of her time who eschewed the shackles of marriage and motherhood in favour of an artistic life.
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, Dorothea’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.