My Country and No More Boomerang

‘My Country’ and ‘No More Boomerang.’ Two of Australia’s most influential and intriguing poems known for enlightening readers about the vast changes throughout Australian history as well as portraying the Australian voices that experienced this transformational era. The composers, Dorothea Mackellar and Oodegroo Noonuccal, have successfully introduced us to important ideas about the people and the world in which they live through the use of various techniques and poetic devices.
The sense of connection and belonging to the Australian environment is a strong aspect of the Australian lifestyle. The complexities endured in Mackellar’s description of the landscape ‘ragged mountain ranges’ and ‘pitiless blue skies’ emphasised through sensory language and personification of the Australian skies, reinforces the harsh natural wonders that Australia exudes, furthermore, portraying imagery of the rich natural Australian landscape. However, despite the description of the brutal outdoors, a sense of attachment and unconditional love for the land is seen in ‘I love her far horizons’ the continuing use of personifying the land along with the first person narration reinforces the personal connections to the land whilst the personification of the land encapsulates a human relationship with the environment. This visual imagery that the composer portrays to us through descriptive language, further emphasise the Australian voices and their connection to the landscape and the world that they live in.
The poem ‘No More Boomerang’ depicts a much different aspect of Australian voices. The composer, Oodegroo Noonuccal, demonstrates the power of a transitory Australian identity and cultural transformation. We also receive the perspective of the world from an Aboriginal activist who lived through these many transitional evolutions in Australian history. ‘Now we got movies, and pay to go in.’ The high modality of ‘now’ and the juxtaposition of the Aboriginal’s previous forms of