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My country tour -- starting soon


After a week at the beach we headed off on a 2,000 km road tour hugging the coastline for a while, then turning inland to green pastures, up Australia's highest mountains (not very high), through the dry country to the west and eventually swinging our way back home.

I love the diversity of our landscape -- and as it does for many Australians brings to mind My Country by Dorothea Mackellar, a poem she wrote 100 years ago in England when she was feeling homesick, contrasting the countryside around her with the landscape of home.

Please click the link to read the full poem ... I will be selecting images that match it, in the order of our tour, not the poem itself.

By the way, sparrows are an import from England that thrive here.

Musing:
From My Country by Dorothea Mackellar
"I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains."


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  1. JulieJanuary 10, 2009 at 2:59 PM

    It is rare that I see a sparrow now. When I was young(er) they were the MOST common bird. However, now the most common birds seem to be the common miner and the noisy mynah. Not sure I got those the right way around.

    Love this image - so evocative. This is a series I am so looking forward to.

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  2. JulieJanuary 10, 2009 at 3:01 PM

    - meant to ask. What sort of camera do you use?

    ReplyDelete
  3. PJJanuary 11, 2009 at 4:33 PM

    I hate to correct you, J-E, but I believe those are "love birds".'~) They really plucked my heart strings.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Joan ElizabethJanuary 11, 2009 at 6:37 PM

    Julie, I have noticed a big decrease in sparrows too, that's why it was in some ways quite nice to see them flitting about the campsite. There were no miners or mynas around. I did a bit of research on the web and interestingly they say the Australian Noisy Miner is more problematic than the introduced Common Myna in the reduction of small bird numbers.

    I use an Olympus E500.

    I use a

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