Foreign Minister Penny Wong has visited the city of her birth and drawn on her early upbringing in Malaysia to try to recast Australia's image as an increasingly diverse country at home in Asia.
Senator Wong received a warm welcome at a reception in Kota Kinabalu last night, with family members, friends and political leaders alike gathering to welcome a daughter of the city.
She told the gathering that her visit was "act of homecoming" but also an "act of hope and an act of respect".
"It's an act of hope that my story and my family's story can contribute to the relationship between the nation of my birth and the nation to which I belong," she said.
"And that story can bring the human and personal dimension to strengthen the relationship of our nations."
Perhaps unsurprisingly, plenty of people in the crowd claimed a direct connection to Senator Wong.
One former neighbour told the ABC she remembered her mother selling chicken eggs to Senator Wong's father, prominent local architect Francis Wong.
"There was a gang of us. We were very close," she said.
"We're very proud of her."
Senator visits touchstones of her life
Francis Wong met Senator Wong's mother, Jane Chapman, while studying at Adelaide University.
Senator Wong left Kota Kinabalu and moved to Australia at age eight, but she continued to return to see family in the city as she made a life in a new country.
The Foreign Minister's day in Kota Kinabalu was littered with visits to touchstones of her childhood and later life.
At times the cameras were welcome, like when she visited a popular eatery where she has always been able to savour fish ball congee on visits back to the city.
The fish balls at Kuo Man restaurant, she said, were "almost as good" as those her grandmother used to make.
"This place has a lot of memories for me," she said.
"This is the first time I've been here without my father, actually."
The cameras also followed Senator Wong when she visited her old primary school, Kinabalu International School, on a campus partly designed by Francis Wong.
The school was embryonic when she started there, and the young Penny Wong was only its 19th student.
"It was just one building and there weren't many kids, but it was fun," she told the students.
There was a sense it was a slightly less forgiving place than it is today.
"There was a lot more old-style teaching," Senator Wong said.
'The strongest person I have ever known'
Other parts of her visit were private.
The media was asked to stay away when Senator Wong visited the grave of her grandmother, Madam Lai Fung Shim, who survived the brutal Japanese occupation of Borneo.
Senator Wong paid tribute to her grandmother — who she called her Poh-Poh — during a speech in Kuala Lumpur yesterday, saying: "In times of struggle I think of her and what she had to endure."
"Most of our family died in the war, and Poh-Poh was left alone to care for her children in the hardest of circumstances," she told the crowd.
"She was barely literate. She was loving and humble, and the strongest person I have ever known."
But the trip was not just a meander down memory lane.
Senator Wong was also clearly intent on delivering a message about Australia and using her personal history to say something about the trajectory being traced by the nation today.
"This story can be told by so many Australians. We have so many Australians who were born overseas or whose parents were been born overseas, who have connections with South-East Asia and other countries around the world," she told journalists.
"I hope that my story can contribute to reminding people in this region and throughout the world that Australia is a modern, diverse and multicultural society keen to keep on engaging in the region."
The suggestion – unstated – was that Australia's image in Asia might be stuck in aspic, with many still seeing the country as a largely Anglo outpost.
Senator Wong began one answer saying, "We have insufficiently …" before pausing and trying a softer tack.
"[Diversity] is one of the strengths of who Australia is," she said.
"And we should tell the story more."
Senator Wong winced slightly when asked if she was in a "unique" position to do just that.
"I always resile from the word unique. My experience is not that unique," she replied.
But she also acknowledged that she was still well placed to tell the story of how the face of Australia had changed in the decades since she arrived as a child.
"If you believe something you probably deliver it better, don't you?" she said.
"And it happens to be the truth."
