How does one fold a fitted sheet correctly? I think we have all asked this question and grappled with this challenging task at one point in time. I have my dear friend and excellent travel buddy to thank for teaching me this piece of laundry wisdom. I was at Anna’s family home and helping her with the washing one summer holidays when she witnessed my shoddy attempt at folding one of her fitted sheets. She was shocked and from that day on the mystery was no longer, I knew how it was done and I’ve never looked back. I have so many shared memories with Anna, from bus buddies and basketball teammates at school to first flat mates in Brisbane and travel companions throughout Europe. Each time I fold a sheet I am reminded of Anna and the adventures we have shared together from Italy to Morocco and many wonderful places in between.

Sunflowers take me directly back to being a little girl whizzing along the country roads enroute to my Auntie’s house in Clifton Queensland past field upon field of sunflowers standing tall, saluting the sun. We were always on the lookout for at least two rogue sunflowers growing outside of the farmers’ bounds so we could pick them for ourselves without the guilt of thieving. One fine day we were in luck and arrived to greet our auntie at the farm hauling in our fortunate finds, barely being able to lift the heavy flower heads for the obligatory photo taken in the front lawn of the country homestead. The photo itself was a precious object and has long since been misplaced, but the image remains clearly burned into my memory and is trigged each time I see sunflowers in full bloom.

I believe the Monte Carlo is the royality of the Arnott’s biscuit range and I think I believe this because of the kindness of Mrs Dunn, the elderly lady who lived next door to my grandfather in Brisbane. On our visits to Pa, my little sister and I would sneak off through the pretty iron gate that adjoined their properties and knock on the back door of Mrs Dunn’s house. If she was home, we were welcomed in and she would seat us at her retro kitchen table where she would serve us tea in fine china and monte carlo biscuits on matching cake plates. We would have a lovely chat with her before heading back to Pa’s feeling like little princesses. My boys love Monte Carlo biscuits too and every time they talk me into buying a packet I am reminded of the kindness and gentleness of those moments with Mrs Dunn and the freedom of those young years.

Brisbane in October through to early January is awash with purple as the jacarandas that densely populate the city and suburbs are in full bloom. The beginning of the jacaranda season just so happens to coincide with the lead up to final year exams when each year our school principal would climb up to the lectern, backlit by the enormous triangular stained-glass window, he would verbalise the obvious parallel :‘The jacarandas are in bloom, it’s exam time ladies and time to study’. He was a gentle man with a particularly green thumb proven by the rotation of highly scented fresh roses he would bring into his office from his own rose garden. Happy days.

Ok, I admit, this is an unusual one, but each time I squirt dishwashing liquid onto a cloth or a sponge to wash up, I am reminded of our friend Christian and transported straight back to his very cool batchelor pad with the spiral staircase on Portobello Road in Notting Hill. As I helped Christian wash up after a lovely lunch at his place, he went on to tell me how he had solved a problem that had been bothering him ever since his brother had moved in. Christian had noticed they were going through three times the amount of dishwashing liquid than usual, so he got to thinking. He hypothesised that instead of squirting the dishwashing liquid directly onto the sponge, holding the dishwashing liquid for longer, therefore washing more items per squirt, that his brother must have been squirting the liquid directly onto the dirty dish in turn washing the liquid down the drain. With his hypothesis in mind, he observed his brother washing up was proven correct meaning It was a simple matter of technique that would make the washing up process more efficient and economical. Problem solved.

Avocado is a staple in our house, but I remember a time when avocado was not that popular. It came onto the scene when I was in primary school. One school holiday we were sat around my auntie Joan’s kitchen table for lunch when she brought out this unusual dark green egg-shaped fruit and proceeded to slice and spread the mushy centre onto toast. It was my mother’s apprehensive reaction to being offered some of this strange fruit on toast that I remember vividly and caused me to be quite suspicious. Mum was not adventurous when it came to food which meant we ate a delicious and wholesome, yet basic diet growing up. It wasn’t until I travelled that my palate was expanded, and I am grateful for it. Lots of memories were formed around auntie Joan’s kitchen table, it is where I had to take my first anti-biotic in a capsule and almost choked, where I stapled my finger after being told not to play with the stapler and got to help and watch hundreds of worm shaped biscuits being made, one of Auntie Joan’s best biscuits.

It is very hard to forget the kind act of a stranger. I was 25 and travelling back to my share house in North London on the Underground from Heathrow where I had just said goodbye to my sister. I had moved to London only weeks before and was beside myself at the realisation I may not see her or my family in Brisbane for quite some time. Was I doing the right thing? Caught up in my own head, the more I thought about it, the more the tears flowed. At one point in my journey, an American service man boarded my carriage and upon noticing my state was prompted to find out what was wrong, was it a boy? He asked. No, not a boy, I miss my sister. I replied… He took his perfectly pressed silk pocket square from his top jacket pocket an handed it to me to wipe away my tears. We had a little chat which lifted my spirits and upon needing to alight, he insisted I keep the pocket square; and I did just that holding on to it for many years as a reminder of his empathy and how a simple kindness can make a big difference to another person.

Much of the time our memories are created through our sensory experiences of the word and none more so than through our sense of taste. Travel expanded my palate immensely and traveling with friends and sharing their experiences of food was especially eyeopening. I had just moved to London and had arranged to meet up with my Brisbane friend Rhylla in Piccadilly Circus to hear all about her time travelling in Italy. So besotted with her time there, she insisted on catching up in a little Italian restaurant in the back streets of the West End. Down some stairs below street level and through an arched entrance, we sat at a small table, and I soaked up all she had to share of her adventures in Bella Italia. When we’d finished our meal, the waiter offered us dessert, letting us know he had a special on the menu…panettone. I’d never heard of it before and both Rhylla and the waiter, surprised, insisted I must try it. Well, I tried, and I loved it and to this day, panettone has become one of my favourite flavours and annual Christmas treats - from Christmas with Freya and Divina in Istanbul to Christmas lunch with Lorenzo in Harry’s Bar Venice, sharing part of the ginormous panettone served for desert covered in brandy custard.

Each time I break a pencil lead, I am transported back to my grade five classroom and my starry eyes for Ben, the cute boy in my class with thick flopsy brown hair and hundreds of freckles. On his desk he kept a jar which he intended to fill by the end of the year with all the leads he’d broken. It was a rather large jar and before long the whole class were helping him to achieve his goal by donating their own broken leads. My crush on Ben meant I was willing to go that little bit further and hence made the decision to sacrifice all my pencils, coloured and HB’s, for his cause. After developing a blister from the slow and lengthy process of sharpening and breaking my pencils, I decided to quicken the process by slicing open my pencils length ways with a pair of open scissors. I was only about three pencils in when the scissors slipped, and I sliced deeply into my left ‘tall man’ finger. I have no idea what became of Ben, his family relocated to Sydney at the end of that year, but I still have the action of breaking a pencil and a scar to remind me of him and those fun primary school days.

It was the 80’s and Santa had delivered the best present ever….. A boom box and the cassette soundtrack to our favourite TV show Fame. We had to visit family in Toowoomba on boxing day and we were not leaving the city without our newest gadget. Dad bought 4 massive batteries and loaded them into the back of the boom box, and we were ready for our road trip out west. The memory is as fresh as yesterday. My sister and I with Sarah the golden cocker spaniel in the back seat of the old Peugeot with the boom box between us. Lots of grooving and singing along in excitement and lots of forwarding and rewinding to get to our favourite tracks till the batteries eventually went flat (to our parents’ delight). I still have the cassette despite having no boom box to play it on. It’s an object full of those happy road trip memories and tunes that get stuck in your head.

This is a very specific memory. A very old memory from early childhood. It was probably the first time I ate watermelon maybe? I’m not too sure but each time I have watermelon I am taken back to this moment. I recall it being a very hot day and we were playing outside at the home of family friends we have since lost touch with. They had a single level home surrounded by a short brick wall. We were hot and thoroughly played out when Mrs Morrison brought the kids out a big plate of cut up chilled watermelon. I remember sitting in the blaring summer sun on that brick fence munching into the refreshing watermelon, juice running down my arms and dripping off my elbows into the grass, counting how many black seeds we could spit out. We felt revived for more play and a run under the sprinkler. Watermelon will always be the refreshing taste of a hot summer.

I’ve always loved how one’s sense of smell can instantly transport you back to a person or a place. 4711 is not a fragrance you smell much of now that the perfume market is saturated with hundreds of scents and celebrity fragrances. If I ever do catch the scent, however, I am immediately back learning how to knit and sew dolls clothes with my grandma Wanda or sneaking down the stairs to our guest room to have morning cuddles and stories with her when she was visiting us from Toowoomba. I keep a bottle as a memento of my darling Grandmother we loved so much.

My mother was a country girl born and raised on a property on the Great Dividing Range just outside of Toowoomba which meant we would often visit for large family gatherings. The drive to Toowoomba was a couple of hours but I knew we were near when we went under the rail bridge on Bridge Road and past Grandma’s old house. Often the gatherings would be held at Auntie Pat’s and Uncle Pat’s house. They were a fabulous couple and I have so many fond memories of them on our trips to visit. A visit would always involve a sumptuous meal with an array of deserts that would put the CWA president to shame (cheesecake with flies – aka passionfruit) followed by a slide show from their most recent travels which I would be glued to. But the best thing was when Auntie Pat would bring out the tupperware container filled with sweets for the kids. There would always be licorice all sorts in the mix. I would have to compete with Dad for these as they were his favourites too.

When I see a happy cat I cannot help but smile. My first experience of the happy cat was at my grandmother’s house in Toowoomba. She had a large ceramic cookie jar in the guise of a happy cat which she kept sat high on a shelf above the fridge. At the end of our visits grandma would lift it down, remove the cats head and invite us to lucky dip a biscuit out of its bulging torso. It was when I moved to London that I was reacquainted with the happy cat in the shop window I passed each day on my walk home from the London underground. The shop had five or six battery operated metallic happy cats lined up along the windowsill waving their arms in an air-punching motion. Each day I passed them I would smile and be reminded of my grandmother who had long since left us. It was the perfect antidote to any feelings of home sickness.