I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror –
The wide brown land for me!

Australia: the land of kangaroos, koalas and deadly spiders.  Back in 1904, just three years after the federation of Australia, poet Dorothea Mackellar wrote what became an iconic poem entitled “My Country” to describe her love for her home.  I’m a far cry from being a poet and am definitely not qualified to criticise such a legend, but I think there’s a little something missing from Mackellar’s tribute:  Aussie Rules and Aussie meat pies.

OK, we can forgive her for not mentioning the pies…according to Wikipedia (don’t we all get our facts from there?) the Aussie meat pie originated in the early 1900s, so maybe Mackellar had not had the privilege of trying one when she wrote her poem.  But Aussie Rules football has been around since the 1840s!

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