Land of the blue and gold

Song with words by Ellinor G. Walker and music by Frances S. Walker, written for South Australia's centenary of 1936. One of the many original manuscript items in the Mortlock Library of South Australiana archival record group of Ellinor Walker PRG 1019/7/2/1.

[First verse]

Set by the shore of a southern sea,
Child of the sunlight, the fair, the free,
Bright as the blue of her heaven is she,
Sunniest South Australia!
Sweet with her wattles and gums entwine
Orange and olive and jewel-hung vine.
Land that is yours and land that is mine!
Sunniest South Australia!

[Chorus]

Flower of the south!
Land of the blue and gold!
Down through a hundred years
Her destiny hath unrolled.
Sister, brother, hands with each other
Face to the years untold
Build her still fairer, nobler and rarer,
Land of the blue and gold!

[Second verse]

Wide is the measure of our domain
Rich is her treasure by hill and plain
Ready for courage and faith to gain,
Sunniest South Australia!
Land of our love and our loyalty's row!
Ray of the star on a nation's brow!
Hail to her here and hail to her now!
Sunniest South Australia!

[Third verse]

Honour the names on her historied page,
Brave pioneers of a sterner age.
Gallantly built they our heritage,
Sunniest South Australia!
Grant, oh grant us that we be worth
Rightly to follow and bring to birth
A nobler state for a nobler earth
In sunniest South Australia!