You could say I am pretty Australian. Not because I wear thongs (I still haven’t recovered from the fact that Haviana somehow made thongs trendy) or say “gday” (which I don’t by the way), but because my family came out on the ships. Not because my great, great, great, great, great (you get the picture) grandfather stole a loaf of bread, but because he was a soldier on the ship. It is written in a book in the library that my great, great, great (we don’t need to go there again) grandmother Harriet Lewington, is speculated to the be the first white woman born after the swan river colony in Perth was settled. Like I said, pretty Australian.

This is the same book that has a picture of my great grandmother Emily (aged 4) with 19 of her brothers and sisters. Yes, you read that right, 19! Rather ironic don’t you think, that I come from a long line of breeders, yet I at 33 have no inkling whatsoever to reproduce. The reason that photo was taken always blows my mind. You need to remember, that it was 1904, and getting a family of 5 to Fremantle (through bush tracks) for a “pixie” family photo on horse and cart would have been hard enough. But, you see, my great grandmother Emily was dying. So there she is, in the middle of this photo, sitting limply in her sister’s lap, with only days to live. But, she of course survived, which is why I am here, and so too are hundreds of other people, who wouldn’t be, if she had died as expected. Not only that, each of her descendants have crossed paths and changed other people’s lives. That photo captures a moment in time, where the world was sitting on its axis, waiting to spin one way or the other.

One of her daughters was my beloved nanna Beryl (and you don’t get much more Australian than a name like that). She epitomised what it is to be an Australian, especially when it came to cooking. Sure, Vegemite sandwiches are synonomous with Australia (much to my disgust they appeared regularly in my lunchbox at school – ever tried eating a warm Vegemite sandwich after it’s been sitting in your school bag in the heat all day?), but my nanna cooked everything from the Country Women’s Association cookbook, or the CWA as it’s affectionately known. I am sure that many remember this from their childhood, along with the Golden Wattle and Women’s Weekly cookbooks – I spent many an afternoon trying to make toffees from the former and lusted after many a birthday cake in the latter (we always got to choose which one we wanted and nanna would make it for us every year).

Noone could cook like my nanna. There were her home made meat pies (yes she even made the pastry from scratch), soup which she cooked on her woodfire stove (I spent many a winter’s day eating endless bowls with fresh buttered bread), apple pies, lamingtons, trifles, raspberry and coconut slice and scones, but my favourite was simply her mashed potato. Don’t ask me what she did to it, but it tasted so good, I would get her to make me a whole plate of it.

As the last siren of the school year rang signifying the start of the summer holidays, we burst out of class with exuberance and a feeling of freedom. We spent our summer running under the sprinkler and sliding down the slippery slide, which was easily made by laying the hose down along a few cut up rubbish bags with washing detergent on them. My mum had a paranoia about pools, so it took hours of cajoling and begging before she would let us go across the road to swim in Jade Slater’s pool. We were officially banned from her pool, the day we came home with 3rd degree burns from spending all afternoon in it without wearing sunscreen. Not to be defeated, I made our own “pool”, by digging a hole in our backyard and lining it with garbage bags (got to love those trusty garbage bags).

We went to the beach, and no matter how much suncream I seemed to slather on, I always ended up with blisters and peeling (which others would beg to peel off for me – one of those disgusting things people enjoy doing but will never admit to). I can remember being so burned, that I couldn’t move nor lay down, even after being covered head to toe in calamine lotion.

As long endless summer days stretched into night, the temperature would still be often searing into the high 30s. They would turn the lights on at the beach, and people would play cricket and continue to swim in the water (this was before sharks started appearing on our shores – now you would need your head read swimming during official shark feeding time), whilst others sat on the beach and ate fish and chips.

The summer holidays also meant that Father Christmas was coming. It was always 40 degrees, which made getting to sleep impossible. In the absence of air conditioning, I would lay with a cold flannel on my head and put a bowl of water in front of the fan (I don’t know why, but this seemed to help, if at all only mentally) and beg for sleep to rescue me from the heat, in between tossing and turning. Finally, I would fall asleep and before I knew it, I would be waking up and wetting my pants with excitement because Father Christmas had arrived.

Christmas in Australia is very different to that overseas. Not just because of the weather, but because of the food. My favourite Christmas meal was the sit down lunch for 30 on Boxing Day at Nanna Beryls (see, I told you I come from a big family). We always started with as many prawns as we could eat, which was followed by cold cuts of silverside, ham, turkey, chicken; salads with finely cut lettuce; pickled onions; boiled curried eggs and lasagna. Dessert was pavlova and trifle; and a queue in the kitchen as one of our aunties would put ice cream on a cone for us. By the end of the day, the table cloths would be stained with betroot and littered with almond nut shells. Always the same food, year after year. Always the same love from our nanna, year after year.

As a child, Australia Day meant going with our extended family to the Perth foreshore, along with tens of thousands of others to watch the fireworks, simulcast with 96FM. You could always guarantee that they would play ‘Imagine’ by John Lennon, ‘Great Southern Land’ by Icehouse, ‘This is Australia’ by Gangajang, ‘We Come From A Land Down Under’ by Men At Work, ‘Celebrate’ by Dragon (before Kylie did her cover of it), ‘You’re the Voice’ by John Farnham and a bit of Midnight Oil and INXS for good measure.

We would arrive early in the afternoon to secure our position. We’d set up the bbq and take the prawn nets out into the river. For those who are reeling in horror that we not only swam in the Swan River, but ate life form out of it, this was the time before it was overgrown with algae and pollution. I would be surprised to discover that any form of life still exists in the river, but eating it from it now, would surely mean being carted off in an ambulance to the nearest hospital.

Now this event is overrun with “bogans” and “yobbos”. Even if I was in Perth, I would have no desire to attend, because it’s no longer a celebration of what it means to be an Australian, but for hooligans to drink as much alcohol as they can, which ultimately means an outbreak of fighting and misconduct (gosh, when did I turn into such an old fogie?)

No, Australia Day means much more me to than that. Australia Day for me is all about my nanna Beryl. Aptly, this beautiful woman and Queen of home made lamingtons, passed away on Australia Day last decade. So raise your glass and your “lami” in honour of my much loved Nanna.

What does Australia Day mean to you?