Where the Pelican Builds is a poem by Australian poet Mary Hannay Foott. It was first published in The Bulletin magazine on 12 March 1881, and later in the poet's collection Where the Pelican Builds and Other Poems. E. S. Wilkinson, in "The Brisbane Courier" in 1932, writes that the poem was inspired by the story of two brothers, Cornelius and Albert Prout. These men, who came from Sydney originally, had moved to Queensland to work on the land and over the years tended to move further west looking for "some fine country" they could take up. In December 1877 they set off from western Queensland towards the South Australian/Northern Territory border area and were never heard from again. Mary Hannay Foott, who lived in the region from where the men set out, heard the tale from the grieving parents, and based this poem on the brothers' search.
Analysis
On the poem's publication in the author's collection Where the Pelican Builds and Other Poems, a reviewer in the Queensland Figaro and Punch opined that the poem "though very short, is as striking a poetic deliverance as I have seen for a long time, and even the slight obscurity of meaning in the last few lines lends an air of mysticism to a conclusion which contrasts strongly with, and not unpleasingly tempers the intense realism of, the opening." The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature states that the poem "records, from the viewpoint of the waiting women, the tragedy that so frequently struck the pioneer families - the loss of loved ones who were drawn by the lure of the land further out."
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