Advance Australia Fair
by Peter Dodds
McCormack
ustralians
all let us rejoice,
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For we are young and free;
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We've golden soil and wealth for toil;
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Our home is girth by sea;
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Our land abounds in nature's gifts,
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Of beauty rich and rare,
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In history's page, let every stage,
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Advance Australian Fair.
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In joyful strains, then let us sing,
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Advance Australian Fair.
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Beneath our radiant Southern Cross,
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We'll toil with hearts and hands;
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To make this Commonwealth ours,
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Renowned of all the lands;
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For those who've come across the seas,
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We've boundless plains to share;
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With courage let us all combine
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To Advance Australia Fair.
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In joyful strains then let us sing,
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Advance Australian Fair.
MY COUNTRY
By Dorothea Mackellar.
The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes,
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins.
Strong love of grey-blue distance,
Brown streams and soft,
dim skies –
I know, but cannot share it,
My love is
otherwise.
I love a sun burnt 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!
The stark white ring-barked forests,
All tragic to the
moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush
of noon,
Green tangle of the brushes
Where lithe lianas
coil,
The orchids deck the tree-tops,
And ferns the warm
dark soil.
Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When, sick at heart, around us
We see the cattle die –
But then the grey clouds gather
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.
Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the rainbow gold,
For flood and fire and famine
She pays us back threefold.
Over the thirst paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The
filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze……..
An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land –
All you
who have not loved her,
You will not understand –
Though
Earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know
to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.
I STILL CALL AUSTRALIA HOME!
Peter Allen
I am so proud to be Australian when I hear Qantas version of
this an of course Peter Allen singing it. These are Peter's
original words.
I've been to cities that never close down,
From New York to
Rio and old London town,
But no matter how far or how wide
I roam,
I still call Australia home.
Verse:
I'm
always trav'lin',
I love being free,
And so I keep
leaving the sun and the sea,
But my heart lies waiting -
over the foam,
I still call Australia home.
All the sons
and daughters spinning 'round the world,
Away from their
fam'ly and friends,
But as the world gets older and older
and colder,
It's good to know where you, journey ends.
Verse:
But someday we'll all be together once more,
When
all of the ships come back to the shore,
I realise
something I've always known,
I still call Australia home.
But no matter, how far or how wide I roam,
I still call
Australia, I still call Australia,
I still call Australia
home.
GREEN & GOLD MALARIA
by Rupert McCall
The day would
soon arrive when I could not ignore the rash.
I was
obviously ill and so I called on Doctor Nash.
This standard
consultation would adjudicate my fate.
I walked into his
surgery and gave it to him straight:
`Doc, I wonder if you
might explain this allergy of mine,
I get these pins and
needles running up and down my spine.
From there, across my
body, I will suddenly extend -
My neck will feel a shiver
and the hairs will stand on end.
And then there is the
symptom that only a man can fear -
A choking in the throat,
and the crying of a tear.'
Well, the Doctor scratched his
melon with a rather worried look.
His furrowed brow
suggested that the news to come was crook.
`What is it
Doc?' I motioned. `Have I got a rare disease?
I'm man
enough to cop it sweet, so give it to me, please.'
`I'm not
too sure,' he answered, in a puzzled kind of way.
`You've
got some kind of fever, but it's hard for me to say.
When
is it that you feel this most peculiar condition?'
I
thought for just a moment, then I gave him my position:
`I
get it when I'm standing in an Anzac Day parade,
And I get
it when the anthem of our native land is played,
And I get
it when Meninga makes a Kiwi-crunching run,
And when Border
grits his teeth to score a really gutsy ton.
I got it back
in '91 when Farr-Jones held the Cup,
And I got it when
Japan was stormed by Better Loosen Up.
I get it when Banjo
takes me down the Snowy River,
And Matilda sends me
waltzing with a billy-boiling shiver.
It hit me hard when
Sydney was awarded the Games,
And I get it when I see our
farmers fighting for their names.
It flattened me when
Bertrand raised the boxing kangaroo,
And when Perkins
smashed the record, well, the rashes were true blue.
So
tell me, Doc,' I questioned. `Am I really gonna die?'
He
broke into a smile before he looked me in the eye.
As he
fumbled with his stethoscope and pushed it out of reach,
He
wiped away a tear and then he gave me this stirring speech:
`From the beaches here in Queensland to the sweeping shores of
Broome,
ON the Harbour banks of Sydney where the Waratah's
in bloom.
From Uluru at sunset to the Mighty Tasman Sea,
In the Adelaide cathedrals, at the roaring MCG.
From the
Great Australian Blight up to the Gulf of Carpentaria,
The
medical profession call it "green and gold malaria".
But
forget about the text books, son, the truth I shouldn't hide.
The rash that you've contracted here is "good old Aussie
pride".
I'm afraid that you were born with it and one thing
is for sure -
You'll die with it, young man, because there
isn't and cure.'