NSW public school students are among the national winners of the 2026 Dorothea Mackellar Poetry Awards.

Australia's largest and longest-running poetry competition for school students, the awards inspire young writers from Kindergarten to Year 12 to hone their creative writing skills.

Nearly 8,000 poems were submitted by around 5,500 students from 480 schools for the 2026 awards.

Tamworth High School student, Lily Prendergast, won the Senior Secondary category with her poem, 'The Voice Beneath My Feet'. Tamworth Public School was named winner of the national Primary Schools Award, presented to the school with the best overall results across the competition.

Dorothea Mackellar wrote the first draft of her best-known poem, 'Core of My Heart', in 1904 aged 19 while homesick in London. The poem's second stanza, 'I love a sunburnt country', is among the most widely recognised verses in Australian literature.

Mackellar drew inspiration for the poem from Kurrumbede, her family's property near Gunnedah, which she visited regularly throughout her life. The Kurrumbede Award is presented to students living within 100km of Gunnedah. Tamworth High's Lillian Smith won the secondary Kurrumbede Award for her poem, 'My Name', while the primary Kurrumbede Award was won by Tamworth Public student, Adele Rankmore, for 'Autumn Dancers'.

Urbenville Public School student Arjay Wark's poem, 'Bushfire Raze', won the David Maher Award, for the best entry from a student at a school with fewer than 30 students.

Normanhurst Public School student, Meredith Butler, was runner-up in the lower primary category, and Roseville Public School student Abbey Fu, was runner-up in the upper primary division. Dubbo South Public School student Ashton Thorne-Small, was runner-up in the assisted learning (primary) category.

The Dorothea Mackellar Poetry Awards were established in 1984. The competition attracts thousands of student poems from across the country each year. The awards are run by the Dorothea Mackellar Memorial Society, based in Gunnedah.