Queensland has been called many things –the Sunshine State, Bananaland and Johburg , all tired old labels. It was also infamously known as Australia’s Police State and the Moonlight State . In a poetic blast from the past comes a new, sexier title: Goddess of the Sun . What a superb marketing brand . Little Darwin intends to register this name and is prepared to sell it to Queensland for a mere $5million deposited in a Swiss bank account or buried in the Canary Islands with a Myers catalogue to mark the spot.
While rummaging through boxes of ephemera in a Brisbane antique emporium, a member of our literary department came upon the expression Goddess of the Sun in a slim volume of self published poems about the Australian Bush by J. Stratton Wadley who also wrote a l932 book on graphology, the science of handwriting and its application.
Sunned and foxed , the collection of poems has a foreword , by A.E. Palfrey , writer of Queensland school history books, which states Wadley loved the land with its strange fauna and flora and admired the dogged fighting qualities of those who tamed the bush . Wadley praised squatters, Aboriginals, nuns , drovers and revived happy Christmas memories . In the eight pages of verse is the following –
While rummaging through boxes of ephemera in a Brisbane antique emporium, a member of our literary department came upon the expression Goddess of the Sun in a slim volume of self published poems about the Australian Bush by J. Stratton Wadley who also wrote a l932 book on graphology, the science of handwriting and its application.
Sunned and foxed , the collection of poems has a foreword , by A.E. Palfrey , writer of Queensland school history books, which states Wadley loved the land with its strange fauna and flora and admired the dogged fighting qualities of those who tamed the bush . Wadley praised squatters, Aboriginals, nuns , drovers and revived happy Christmas memories . In the eight pages of verse is the following –
QUEENSLAND
Queensland, goddess of the sun ,
On whose warm bosom thrives a virile race,
In happy cities and on squatter’s run ;
A privilege to live in such a place .
Luscious fruits and fertile soil abound,
With work for every earnest man to do,
Where adventure sought may soon be found ;
To win a stake in Queensland ; hopes renew.
Her able people rally to the cause ,
When’ere they find usurpers at her gates ,
From Bush and everywhere without a pause ;
No colour bar , her people all are mates.
Queensland, goddess of the sun ,
On whose warm bosom thrives a virile race,
In happy cities and on squatter’s run ;
A privilege to live in such a place .
Luscious fruits and fertile soil abound,
With work for every earnest man to do,
Where adventure sought may soon be found ;
To win a stake in Queensland ; hopes renew.
Her able people rally to the cause ,
When’ere they find usurpers at her gates ,
From Bush and everywhere without a pause ;
No colour bar , her people all are mates.
