My Country

"My Country" is an iconic patriotic poem about Australia, written by Dorothea Mackellar (1885–1968) at the age of 19 while homesick in the United Kingdom. After travelling through Europe extensively with her father during her teenage years, she started writing the poem in London in 1904 and re-wrote it several times before her return to Sydney. The poem was first published in The Spectator in London on 5 September 1908 under the title "Core of My Heart". It was reprinted in many Australian newspapers, quickly becoming well known and establishing Mackellar as a poet.

Mackellar's family owned substantial properties in the Gunnedah district of New South Wales and a property (Torryburn) in the Paterson district of the Hunter Region. The inspiration for her poems undoubtedly came from the time she spent on the rural properties as a child. The poem is believed to have been directly inspired by witnessing the breaking of a drought when she was at Torryburn; "My Country" uses imagery to describe the land after the breaking of a long drought. Of ragged mountain ranges possibly refers to the Mount Royal Ranges, and the Barrington Tops.

My Country (album)

My Country is a double album by George Jones. It was released on the Musicor label in 1968.

Background

One criticism of Jones's time at Musicor, which lasted from 1965 to 1971, was the lack of quality control. Jones recorded an enormous amount of material during this time and almost all of it got issued on LPs. The label had released a double album called The George Jones Story in 1968, which featured a mix of old and new songs, and My Country repeats the process. These packages, combined with LPs still being released by his earlier labels Mercury and United Artists, resulted in the market being flooded with releases by "the Possum." In the 1989 documentary Same Ole Me, Starday president Don Pierce recalls producer Pappy Daily's stewardship of Jones's career: "Well, we took him to Mercury, and he became the artist for their country division, and then he took him to United Artists, and he was the country music division at United Artists. The he took him to Musicor and he was the country division at Musicor, and so a lot of people have been ridin' on ol' George." The cavalier approach taken by Musicor to his recordings would make Jones increasingly unhappy as time went on.

My Country (film)

My Country is a 1986 Australian film about the discovery of Australia.

The film was partly shot at Monash University.

The director died of pancreatic cancer in London in 2003.

References