In Search of Dorothea: A biography of Australian poet Dorothea Mackellar

Abstract

My thesis work In Search of Dorothea is a biography of the poet Dorothea Mackellar who wrote one of Australia’s most recognised poems, “My Country”, phrases from which are still familiar to many Australians. But in a post-Mabo context in which questions of cultural ownership and “belonging” have become urgent, how might we read its claims to spiritual possession of “the wide brown land”? What was Mackellar’s relationship with the landscapes of her poetry and why has this poem, of all her work, endured? If hers was a talent unfulfilled, what conditions led to her fate? I explore the untold story of Mackellar’s life, and her privileged perspective as a woman with close connections to political and artistic elites during a turbulent period in Australian history. The myths swirling around “My Country” and its provenance are as numerous as they are intriguing and I seek the truth about the poet and that poem more than a century after it was written. The exegetical essay that accompanies the biography then pays closer attention to the ways in which “My Country” has been read over the last hundred years. A particular focus is the Australian Poetry Journal’s 2017 “Transforming My Country” project, in which poets from a range of different backgrounds wrote back to and challenged what was described as the “sweet, blinkered nostalgia of ‘My Country’.” I will examine the response from contemporary Indigenous poets and, by way of comparison, consider the work of an earlier Indigenous poet, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, alongside the writing of white poet and activist Judith Wright. As Mackellar was writing from a British-Australian point of view, her heartfelt lyrics about a deep connection with the land are easily overshadowed by the sheer depth of ancient Indigenous culture and its peoples’ connection to country. Can a poem written at the high tide of the White Australia Policy still speak to a country trying to come to terms with its racist past? Can it be a poem for all Australians?