The Arthur W. Page Society conference was great.  I set low goals - learn something new, and meet someone nice.  Both were accomplished many times over. 

My Mom is 72 and very, very youthful.  She flew out and we drove around Southern California for a few days.  San Diego, Pala Indian Reservation, Tijuana, Los Angeles were all seen in four days and 458 miles of driving.  It was great.

There’s a lot I miss about America.  The ease and convenience of traveling with no agenda or reservations - and there’s a lot to see within short distances.  It’s fairly low hassle anywhere, and you can do it in style or stick to a budget.  And of course the shopping.  I could live in Australia the rest of my life if I could go to a Walgreen’severy 90 days.  The choices are beyond imagination - a dozen different types of orange juice, variety packs of all different foods, aspirin or paracetamol mixed with lots of other stuff, gifts, magazines, lotions, potions and gels.  It really paralyses you with choice. 

But I choose to live in Australia and for all my new home country has I consider myself lucky.  It may not have the choice of shops in America - but in a weird way that’s a blessing.  I don’t need Orange Juice with Extra Pulp, Calsium and Vitamin E and a splash of Mango.  I’m okay with the garden variety. 

I’m more at peace with America now that I don’t have to live there - I can visit, samples it’s numerous offerings, then return home to Sydney.  To my family.  To my adopted country. 

My Country

by Dorothea Mackeller

1885-1968, written in 1904

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 sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of rugged 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,
And 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 thirsty 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.