Dorothea Mackellar OBE
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Poet, daughter of Sir Charles Kinnaird Mackellar was born at Rose Bay, Sydney, on 1 July 1885 and educated privately and at the University of Sydney.
While staying on a family property in the Allyn River valley, north of Maitland, NSW, she experienced the breaking of a drought and wrote the poem "My Country". It was published in the Spectator in September 1908, when she was visiting London, was reprinted in most of Australia's leading newspapers, and quickly became Australia's best-known lyric poem. It appeared in her first volume of collected verse, The Closed Door (1911), and has been included in most school anthologies.
She travelled widely, in Europe, Asia and South America, and published three more collections of verse: The Witch-Maid (1914), Dreamharbour (1923) and Fancy Dress (1927). Her novel, Outlaw's Luck (1922), reflected impressions of Argentina, and her poems included translations from Spanish, German and Japanese. She also wrote two other novels in collaboration with Ruth Bedford, but ill health had virtually ended her literary career when Fancy Dress appeared.
She died in Sydney on 14 January 1968, having been appointed OBE in the New Year Honours list. The Poems of Dorothea Mackellar., with a brief memoir by Adrienne Matzenik, was published in 1971.
