A grab for the title of 'droughts and flooding rains'

Australia may well be the land of droughts and flooding rains, but it seems America is making a grab at that title.

Dorothea Mackellar.

The eastern side of America recently vanished under snow and extreme low temperatures, but now the weather extremes have shifted to the west coast with California facing a drought emergency.

The Huffington Post reports, in a story headed: “California drought emergency declared by Governor Jerry Brown”, that Californians are facing the worst drought since records began 100 years ago.

Governor Brown has called for a voluntary 20 per cent cut in water use by all citizens.

Poet Dorothea Mackellar first discussed droughts and flooding rains in her famous poem “My Country”.

McKellar's droughts and floods have a new meaning

Dorothea McKellar

The Australia Dorothea McKellar understood when she wrote “My Country” has, in a contemporary sense, taken on a new meaning.

It was in the second stanza that the late poet (1855-1968) said:

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.

Much of Australia, in particular the eastern-states and within them the south-east corner, has just emerged from a decade-long drought to be confronted by, first in Queensland and then in Victoria and New South Wales, the “flooding rains”.

So droughts and flooding rains it is.

Just today the ABC reports that “Perth swelters through record heatwaves”.