'Australia Fair'
Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2012 11:34 am
This is a bit long-winded, but I found it interesting anyway.
Marion
The following song was published by Maybanke Anderson in 1902 in her book "Australian Songs for Australian Children".
Australia Fair
Australia fair I love thee,
The dear land of my birth;
To me thou art the sweetest,
The brightest spot on earth.
I love thy golden sunshine,
Thy sky of peerless hue,
The soft greys of the distance,
The hills' faint tints of blue.
I love thy yellow beaches,
The clear waves tipped with foam,
The capes that stand like bulwarks,
To guard my native home.
I love thy leafy gullies,
Where palm and tree-fern hide,
The tall, grey gums that clamber
On every steep hill-side.
I love the ferny pathways,
Where wattle blossoms fall,
While in the leafy distance
The bell-bird rings his call.
I love the old slab homesteads,
Each peach and lemon tree,
The paddocks and the slip-rails,
They speak of home to me.
Dear Southern Land, Australia,
Wherever I may roam,
My heart will turn forever
To thee, my native home.
Maybanke Anderson was a teacher and established a private girls' school in Sydney, just at the time when Dorothea McKellar was being privately educated in Sydney. Read on…..
AUSTRALIAN WOMEN FACT FILE (from National Library, Canberra)
MAYBANKE ANDERSON (also Wolstenholme)
(1845-1927)
Feminist Activist and Social Reformer
1845 Born Maybanke Susannah Selfe, 16 February in Kingston-on-Thames, England
1854 Moved to Sydney with her family
1867 Married Edmund Kay Wolstenholme
1883 Established Maybanke College and served as headmistress until 1899
1890 Joined the Women’s Literary Society
c. 1890 Converted to Theosophy, becoming a member of the Theosophy Society
1891 Foundation member of the Womanhood Suffrage League in NSW
1892-1894 Organised and served as Secretary of the Australian Home Reading Union.
1893 Secured legal divorce from Edmund Wolstenholme on grounds of desertion
Elected Vice-President of the International Women’s Union
1894-1895 Edited and published Woman’s Voice
1895 Established the Kindergarten Union of NSW
Joined the National Council of Women of NSW, remaining a member until 1927
1896 Opened the first free kindergarten in Sydney
1897 Appointed Registrar of the Teacher’s Central Registry
1899 Appointed Secretary of the Women’s Federal League
Married Francis Anderson, professor of philosophy at Sydney University
1902 Joined the Women’s Political Education League
1914-1916 Served as President of the Citizen’s Association of NSW
1927 Continued to write and advocate for social concerns until her death while in France on 29 March 1927
Maybanke Anderson, a tireless advocate of women’s rights and wider social reform, was plagued in her first marriage by a harsh life, marked by the death of four of her seven
children, financial difficulty, her husband’s alcoholism and then his desertion. However such circumstances compelled her into affirmative feminist action, influencing her attitudes
toward suffrage and federation, women’s legal rights, the marriage state, and women and children’s rights in basic health and education.
She successfully collaborated with other first wave feminists such as Rose Scott and Mary Windeyer as well as leading male figures. Through such collaborations she ensured the greatest chance of legislative reform and effective use of the women’s vote. In particular
she encouraged the development of women’s legal rights in property and divorce.
Most notable is the contribution made by her fortnightly publication Woman’s Voice. This newspaper provided a platform for forthright discussion of social concerns such as suffrage, sex education, enforced maternity in marriage, as well as divorce. Advocacy of public
health reform continued into WWI, when the spread of venereal disease and it’s devastating effects encouraged Maybanke to continue her cause for sex education. She also lobbied for the wider social responsibility of unmarried mothers and illegitimate children, as well as the importance of women’s wages.
Her skills as an educator led her to become one of the fundamental promoters of free kindergartens in Sydney, the first of which she helped establish. She saw these not only as a means to counter the effects of poverty on children, but also as a social necessity for the development of children into valuable citizens. Child development and education were fundamental issues for both herself and her second husband Francis Anderson.
Many of her later years were spent compiling histories of Pittwater and Hunter’s Hill, as well as maintaining regular correspondence with newspapers on topics of social concern while overseas.
Notable Publications
Maybanke Anderson’s activism saw her contribute many articles, editorials, letters, pamphlets and reports encompassing her broad advocacy topics under various names.
These are the most prominent published materials:
*Woman’s Voice (1894-1895)
Le Mouvement Feministe en Australie (Revue Politique et Parlimentaire - 1898)
Australian Songs for Australian Children (1902)
Formation not Reformation (pamphlet from Pastoralists Review - 1907)
The Story of the Kindergarten Union of New South Wales (1911)
The Root of the Matter (WEA Pamphlet No.1 - 1916)
Mother Lore (1919)
The Story of Pittwater (Royal Australian Historical Society (RAHS) Journal, Vol. V1, Part IV - 1920)
Women in Australia (Meredith Atkinson’s Australia Economic and Political Studies - 1920)
Play and Playgrounds (1924)
The Story of Hunters Hill (1926)
Sources
*Prichard, Janet Joy and Grahame, Emma Maybanke Anderson, in Barbara Caine (Ed)
Australian Feminism: A Companion Oxford University Press 1998
*Roberts, Jan Maybanke Anderson in Heather Radi (Ed.) 200 Australian Women :A Redress Anthology Women Redress Press 1998
*Roberts, Jan and Kingston, Beverly (Eds.) Maybanke, a woman’s voice: the collected works of Maybanke Selfe Wolstenholme Anderson 1845-1927 Ruskin Rowe Press 2001
*Roberts, Jan Maybanke Anderson: sex, suffrage & social reform Ruskin Rowe Press 1997.
*Held in JSNWL
© Jessie Street National Women’s Library (2003)
(My notes)
“Australia Fair” written by Maybanke Anderson was published in 1902 .
Dorothea McKellar’s “My Country” is said to have been published in 1904, but according to Wikipedia, it was first published in London in 1908 under the title "Core of My Heart".
(My questions)
Was Dorothea McKellar taught at Maybanke College in Sydney? I have been unable to find out…..
Was it then a coincidence that once Dorothea had completed her schooling and left for England she wrote a poem that closely resembled, both in words and cadence, her (perhaps) former teacher's song?
So far, nobody has been able to answer…
Dorothea Mackellar
(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
Isobel Marion Dorothea Mackellar, OBE (1 July 1885 – 14 January 1968), was an Australian poet and fiction writer.
The only daughter of noted physician and parliamentarian Sir Charles Kinnaird Mackellar, she was born in Sydney in 1885. Although raised in a professional urban family, Dorothea Mackellar's poetry is usually regarded as quintessential bush poetry, inspired as it is by her experience on her brothers' farms near Gunnedah, North-West New South Wales.
Her best-known poem is My Country, written at age 19 while homesick in England, and first published in the London Spectator in 1908 under the title Core of My Heart. The second stanza of this poem is amongst the most well-known in Australia. Four volumes of her collected verse were published: The Closed Door (published in 1911, contained the first appearance of My Country under its present name); The Witchmaid (1914); Dreamharbour (1923); and Fancy Dress (1926).
In addition to writing poems, Mackellar also wrote novels, at least two in collaboration with Ruth Bedford. These are The Little Blue Devil (1912) and Two's Company (1914). According to Dale Spender, little has been written or is yet known about the circumstances behind this collaboration.[1] Mackellar also wrote a novel in her own right, Outlaw's Luck (1913).
In 1984, Gunnedah resident Mikie Maas created the "Dorothea Mackellar Poetry Awards", which has grown into a nationwide poetry competition for Australian school students.
Dorothea Mackellar was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for her contribution to Australian literature in 1968, two weeks before her death. She is buried with her father and family in Waverley Cemetery overlooking the open ocean.[2] A memorial to Mackellar stands in ANZAC Park in Gunnedah. A federal electorate covering half of Sydney's Northern Beaches and a street in the Canberra suburb of Cook are named in her honour.
On Australia Day, 26 January, 1983, a statue was unveiled in Gunnedah to commemorate Dorothea McKellar. In conjunction with the unveiling, there was an exhibition of a series of thirty four water colour paintings by Jean Isherwood illustrating the writer's most famous poem, My Country. The watercolours were eventually put on permanent display in the Gunnedah Bicentennial Regional Gallery. Isherwood set about painting a series of oils based on the watercolours which were exhibited at the Artarmon Galleries in Sydney in 1986.
Dorothea MacKellar - Australian Bush Poetry
My Country
© 1904 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 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!
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.
Marion
The following song was published by Maybanke Anderson in 1902 in her book "Australian Songs for Australian Children".
Australia Fair
Australia fair I love thee,
The dear land of my birth;
To me thou art the sweetest,
The brightest spot on earth.
I love thy golden sunshine,
Thy sky of peerless hue,
The soft greys of the distance,
The hills' faint tints of blue.
I love thy yellow beaches,
The clear waves tipped with foam,
The capes that stand like bulwarks,
To guard my native home.
I love thy leafy gullies,
Where palm and tree-fern hide,
The tall, grey gums that clamber
On every steep hill-side.
I love the ferny pathways,
Where wattle blossoms fall,
While in the leafy distance
The bell-bird rings his call.
I love the old slab homesteads,
Each peach and lemon tree,
The paddocks and the slip-rails,
They speak of home to me.
Dear Southern Land, Australia,
Wherever I may roam,
My heart will turn forever
To thee, my native home.
Maybanke Anderson was a teacher and established a private girls' school in Sydney, just at the time when Dorothea McKellar was being privately educated in Sydney. Read on…..
AUSTRALIAN WOMEN FACT FILE (from National Library, Canberra)
MAYBANKE ANDERSON (also Wolstenholme)
(1845-1927)
Feminist Activist and Social Reformer
1845 Born Maybanke Susannah Selfe, 16 February in Kingston-on-Thames, England
1854 Moved to Sydney with her family
1867 Married Edmund Kay Wolstenholme
1883 Established Maybanke College and served as headmistress until 1899
1890 Joined the Women’s Literary Society
c. 1890 Converted to Theosophy, becoming a member of the Theosophy Society
1891 Foundation member of the Womanhood Suffrage League in NSW
1892-1894 Organised and served as Secretary of the Australian Home Reading Union.
1893 Secured legal divorce from Edmund Wolstenholme on grounds of desertion
Elected Vice-President of the International Women’s Union
1894-1895 Edited and published Woman’s Voice
1895 Established the Kindergarten Union of NSW
Joined the National Council of Women of NSW, remaining a member until 1927
1896 Opened the first free kindergarten in Sydney
1897 Appointed Registrar of the Teacher’s Central Registry
1899 Appointed Secretary of the Women’s Federal League
Married Francis Anderson, professor of philosophy at Sydney University
1902 Joined the Women’s Political Education League
1914-1916 Served as President of the Citizen’s Association of NSW
1927 Continued to write and advocate for social concerns until her death while in France on 29 March 1927
Maybanke Anderson, a tireless advocate of women’s rights and wider social reform, was plagued in her first marriage by a harsh life, marked by the death of four of her seven
children, financial difficulty, her husband’s alcoholism and then his desertion. However such circumstances compelled her into affirmative feminist action, influencing her attitudes
toward suffrage and federation, women’s legal rights, the marriage state, and women and children’s rights in basic health and education.
She successfully collaborated with other first wave feminists such as Rose Scott and Mary Windeyer as well as leading male figures. Through such collaborations she ensured the greatest chance of legislative reform and effective use of the women’s vote. In particular
she encouraged the development of women’s legal rights in property and divorce.
Most notable is the contribution made by her fortnightly publication Woman’s Voice. This newspaper provided a platform for forthright discussion of social concerns such as suffrage, sex education, enforced maternity in marriage, as well as divorce. Advocacy of public
health reform continued into WWI, when the spread of venereal disease and it’s devastating effects encouraged Maybanke to continue her cause for sex education. She also lobbied for the wider social responsibility of unmarried mothers and illegitimate children, as well as the importance of women’s wages.
Her skills as an educator led her to become one of the fundamental promoters of free kindergartens in Sydney, the first of which she helped establish. She saw these not only as a means to counter the effects of poverty on children, but also as a social necessity for the development of children into valuable citizens. Child development and education were fundamental issues for both herself and her second husband Francis Anderson.
Many of her later years were spent compiling histories of Pittwater and Hunter’s Hill, as well as maintaining regular correspondence with newspapers on topics of social concern while overseas.
Notable Publications
Maybanke Anderson’s activism saw her contribute many articles, editorials, letters, pamphlets and reports encompassing her broad advocacy topics under various names.
These are the most prominent published materials:
*Woman’s Voice (1894-1895)
Le Mouvement Feministe en Australie (Revue Politique et Parlimentaire - 1898)
Australian Songs for Australian Children (1902)
Formation not Reformation (pamphlet from Pastoralists Review - 1907)
The Story of the Kindergarten Union of New South Wales (1911)
The Root of the Matter (WEA Pamphlet No.1 - 1916)
Mother Lore (1919)
The Story of Pittwater (Royal Australian Historical Society (RAHS) Journal, Vol. V1, Part IV - 1920)
Women in Australia (Meredith Atkinson’s Australia Economic and Political Studies - 1920)
Play and Playgrounds (1924)
The Story of Hunters Hill (1926)
Sources
*Prichard, Janet Joy and Grahame, Emma Maybanke Anderson, in Barbara Caine (Ed)
Australian Feminism: A Companion Oxford University Press 1998
*Roberts, Jan Maybanke Anderson in Heather Radi (Ed.) 200 Australian Women :A Redress Anthology Women Redress Press 1998
*Roberts, Jan and Kingston, Beverly (Eds.) Maybanke, a woman’s voice: the collected works of Maybanke Selfe Wolstenholme Anderson 1845-1927 Ruskin Rowe Press 2001
*Roberts, Jan Maybanke Anderson: sex, suffrage & social reform Ruskin Rowe Press 1997.
*Held in JSNWL
© Jessie Street National Women’s Library (2003)
(My notes)
“Australia Fair” written by Maybanke Anderson was published in 1902 .
Dorothea McKellar’s “My Country” is said to have been published in 1904, but according to Wikipedia, it was first published in London in 1908 under the title "Core of My Heart".
(My questions)
Was Dorothea McKellar taught at Maybanke College in Sydney? I have been unable to find out…..
Was it then a coincidence that once Dorothea had completed her schooling and left for England she wrote a poem that closely resembled, both in words and cadence, her (perhaps) former teacher's song?
So far, nobody has been able to answer…
Dorothea Mackellar
(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
Isobel Marion Dorothea Mackellar, OBE (1 July 1885 – 14 January 1968), was an Australian poet and fiction writer.
The only daughter of noted physician and parliamentarian Sir Charles Kinnaird Mackellar, she was born in Sydney in 1885. Although raised in a professional urban family, Dorothea Mackellar's poetry is usually regarded as quintessential bush poetry, inspired as it is by her experience on her brothers' farms near Gunnedah, North-West New South Wales.
Her best-known poem is My Country, written at age 19 while homesick in England, and first published in the London Spectator in 1908 under the title Core of My Heart. The second stanza of this poem is amongst the most well-known in Australia. Four volumes of her collected verse were published: The Closed Door (published in 1911, contained the first appearance of My Country under its present name); The Witchmaid (1914); Dreamharbour (1923); and Fancy Dress (1926).
In addition to writing poems, Mackellar also wrote novels, at least two in collaboration with Ruth Bedford. These are The Little Blue Devil (1912) and Two's Company (1914). According to Dale Spender, little has been written or is yet known about the circumstances behind this collaboration.[1] Mackellar also wrote a novel in her own right, Outlaw's Luck (1913).
In 1984, Gunnedah resident Mikie Maas created the "Dorothea Mackellar Poetry Awards", which has grown into a nationwide poetry competition for Australian school students.
Dorothea Mackellar was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for her contribution to Australian literature in 1968, two weeks before her death. She is buried with her father and family in Waverley Cemetery overlooking the open ocean.[2] A memorial to Mackellar stands in ANZAC Park in Gunnedah. A federal electorate covering half of Sydney's Northern Beaches and a street in the Canberra suburb of Cook are named in her honour.
On Australia Day, 26 January, 1983, a statue was unveiled in Gunnedah to commemorate Dorothea McKellar. In conjunction with the unveiling, there was an exhibition of a series of thirty four water colour paintings by Jean Isherwood illustrating the writer's most famous poem, My Country. The watercolours were eventually put on permanent display in the Gunnedah Bicentennial Regional Gallery. Isherwood set about painting a series of oils based on the watercolours which were exhibited at the Artarmon Galleries in Sydney in 1986.
Dorothea MacKellar - Australian Bush Poetry
My Country
© 1904 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 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!
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.
