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 Mackellar, she was born in Sydney in 1885. Although raised in a professional urban family, Mackellar’s poetry is usually regarded as quintessential bush poetry, inspired 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 Witch Maid, and Other Verses(1914); Dreamharbour (1923); and Fancy Dress (1926).
In addition to writing poems, Mackellar also wrote novels, one by herself, Outlaw’s Luck (1913), and 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.
In the New Year’s Day Honours of 1968, Dorothea Mackellar was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for her contribution toAustralian literature. She died two weeks later. She is buried with her father and family in Waverley Cemetery overlooking the open ocean.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. (The Canberra suburb of McKellar was not named after her, but is often assumed to have been.)
On Australia Day, 26 January 1983, a statue was unveiled in Gunnedah to commemorate Dorothea Mackellar. In conjunction with the unveiling, there was an exhibition of a series of 34 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.
In 1984, Gunnedah resident Mikie Maas created the “Dorothea Mackellar Poetry Awards”, which has grown into a nationwide poetry competition for Australian school students.
Posted in: Celebrities