Issue link: https://viewer.e-digitaleditions.com/i/95079
historyfocus pepper and salt whenever you set the table." Vegemite had clearly become vital to the national identity when, 26 years later, Men at Work equated eating a Vegemite sandwich with the 'language' of Australia in their anthem, 'Down Under'. Dr Cyril Percy Callister remained at Kraft until he died in 1949, and although his grandson, Jamie, never met him, he is determined to keep his grandfather's obscure yet remarkable story alive. "He was someone we can look up to as a great Australian hero, because he had so much integrity and was someone you could admire," says Jamie, who learnt of Cyril through his letters, relatives and co-workers in the process of writing his recently released book, The Man Who Invented Vegemite. Cyril, whose own grandfather was a goldminer, grew up in the Victorian town of Ballarat. He was the first among his siblings to attend university, winning a residential scholarship to Melbourne's Queen's College, where he studied under the tutelage of an influential chemistry professor. Jamie says his grandfather's title, food technologist, didn't do him justice: "He had a Doctor of Science and was a luminously bright guy." Early proof of Cyril's scientific adeptness occurred after he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force in 1915 and was soon transferred from active service to work on explosives manufacture in Britain. Cyril's Vegemite recipe remains almost unchanged since that day in 1923 when the 29-year-old food technologist hit on a winning formula. Vegemite was initially made using left-over yeast cells from the Carlton & United Breweries. (After the Great Depression, Fred Walker's factory allegedly began using another source of yeast.) In a process called autoanalysis, the yeast cells were washed and placed in 37-degree Celsius water to extract the nutrients. Vegetable extracts, salt, celery and onion extract were then added to the nutrient-rich water to create the distinctive paste. Jamie, a builder and former advertising executive, has spent the past seven years researching his grandfather's legacy, interviewing relatives and, in the case of the past two years, meeting publishing deadlines. "I've really enjoyed this process and I want to take it further," he says, hinting that he has another career change in mind. Until recently, Jamie spent most of his days working on the book and taking his kids to surf competitions. Surprisingly, they don't brag about their great-grandfather as much as you might expect. "If they do tell people, they generally get the 'Well, my grandfather invented Peanut Butter' reply," says Jamie, who has no commercial 70 affiliation with the Kraft company. "Unfortunately, I buy my Vegemite like everyone else," he laughs. Jamie has as much passion for sharing his grandfather's story as Cyril had for his invention. "It's as much, if not more, your story as it is mine," Jamie says. "Vegemite is so much a part of us all." Considering there isn't much information available about Vegemite's humble beginnings, The Man Who Invented Vegemite fills in the gaps for those of us who, as teething babies, were pacified with Vegemite-smeared rusks. The story of Vegemite overlaps major events that affected Australians in the 20th century, from World War II and the Great Depression to the polio epidemic and the quest to improve nutrition in Australia. As Jamie says, he set out to learn more about the grandfather he never met and, along the way, discovered that "extraordinary things can happen to (almost) ordinary people". Above: Behind the scenes at the old Kraft factory.