My parents are from Adelaide. Soon after they married, my father’s job took them to Darwin, where I was born. Throughout my childhood we moved country almost every two years, but my parents made sure they came back to Australia for the birth of my two younger sisters. It was very important to them that despite having spent much of our childhood overseas, we were still able to call ourselves Australian.

Since then, I’ve spent most of my adult life in Melbourne and my three sons were born here. Even though my older boys are half-French and my youngest is half-Italian, they consider themselves Australian. Not so much the blond-haired, surf-boarding Australian that we often see on postcards, but more a product of the rich multicultural mix that makes up this big country. To me, that is the Australian Girl I most identify with.