page_title: Thomas Bracken
section_title: Death
hierarchical_section_title: Thomas Bracken / Death
caption_attribution_description: Plaque dedicated to Thomas Bracken in Dunedin, on the Writers' Walk on the Octagon
context_page_description: Thomas Bracken was an Irish-born New Zealand poet, journalist and politician. He wrote "God Defend New Zealand", one of the two national anthems of New Zealand, and was the first person to publish the phrase "God's Own Country" as applied to New Zealand. He also won the Otago Caledonian Society's prize for poetry.
  His mother Margaret died in 1846 and his father Thomas in 1852. He was sent to Australia at the age of 12 to join his uncle, John Kiernan, at Geelong, Victoria.
  Bracken was apprenticed to a pharmacist in Bendigo, later moved around to work on farms as a shearer and drover, and for a time was a gold fossicker and store keeper. At that time he began writing tales over the activities of the diggers involved in the goldrush, and about stock men and sheep men.
  He also established Thomas Bracken and Co with Alexander Bathgate to buy and operate the Evening Herald until it was superseded in 1890 by the liberal Globe.
context_section_description: Bracken died on the night of 16 February 1898, and is buried in the Dunedin Northern Cemetery. A lookout nearby, with views across the city, is named in his honour.
caption: Memorial plaque dedicated to Thomas Bracken in Dunedin, on the Writers' Walk on the Octagon
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