I can't tell you the first time I had a continental roll.
It was such a constant in my upbringing that I never thought to savour the moment when I first tasted the delicious combination. After all, every time I went to a cafe, there it was, ready to be ordered by some lucky customer.
I do, however, remember the moment that it was no longer a constant in my life. Moving east from Western Australia meant more than a change in time zones.
For those who are yet to be initiated, a continental roll is a crusty white roll containing at least three meats, if not four - mortadella, capocollo, salami and ham - topped with cheese (usually Swiss or mozzarella), and antipasti-style vegetables.
Tony Armstrong can remember the first time he tried the continental - or conti - roll. His verdict was that it was delicious but huge in portion size; the original continental roll can be likened to an extra-large, overstuffed sub.
His encounter was caught on camera for the ABC show Tony Armstrong's Extra-Ordinary Things, which sees the Logie winner travel around the country to collect everyday Aussies' most prized possessions. It's not only a collection of incredible stories, but little pieces of Australian history that are now on show at the National Museum of Australia.
"I thought I was someone who thought everyone's got a story to tell. But I don't think I actually [believed it] until I went on the road and talked to people because I realised that everyone actually does," Armstrong says.
"And it can be about anything. I could talk to you about a tote bag because the story is never about the tote bag. It's about what happened when I was carrying it."
And really, that's what connects these mismatched items. If it wasn't for the stories - each a puzzle piece in Australia's history - these items would just be a letter, a piece of wood with a band-aid on it and a model of a sandwich, all kept safe in a glass cabinet.
But to some extent, isn't that the entire contents of any museum?
"The thing that we think about a lot here at the National Museum is the way that the national story happens in ordinary people's lives," curator Martha Sear says.
"There isn't necessarily a distinction between the grand national events you might see in the history books and the way that we all live together in this great country. So sometimes the ordinary objects illuminate what a really big story there is in national history.
"Even an object that you might see every day when in the right context, and with its story still connected to it, can tell you something about huge changes in Australia and the way in which something that happened at a national level impacted an individual person."
The Di Chiera family's conti roll
When choosing items to include in an exhibition, a sandwich doesn't immediately come to mind. But the continental roll is not just any sandwich. It's a representation of Italian immigration in Western Australia, and elsewhere in the world. It's also one of the most delicious lunch options to ever grace a menu.
Today, it is a staple in almost every cafe in Perth, but in the 1950s there was only one cafe where you could find a continental roll - the Di Chiera Brothers deli.
Opened by brothers Antonio and Giuseppe Di Chiera in 1953, the family-run business has become a Perth icon in the decades since.
The roll was never meant to be a staple in the grocery store's offerings, but rather an option for the male Italian migrants who had found themselves in a new country without any home skills. With no one else to make them their lunches, Antonio's wife, Eleonora, would fix them rolls to take to work.
"It was a different time, a different world back then. And these males were really good at their jobs ... but what they weren't good at was their home skills and they didn't have their mothers or their wives or their girlfriends or partners to cook and clean," Antonio and Eleonora's son Tom Di Chiera says.
"So mum's job was to prepare lunches for these men - so she'd be up at five in the morning and she'd start basically making all these rolls for these men to come and pick up at about six o'clock on their way to work and that would be their lunch."
It wasn't called a continental roll back then. Everyone just called it the generic Italian word for a sandwich - un panino.
The rebrand came a few years later, after the original customers had found themselves partnered up and no longer needed to stop by every day.
"Mum was making 120 of these rolls in the mornings and these guys weren't buying them, so she thought we needed a new market," Di Chiera says.
"So she remarketed them with an English name - continental roll, because all of the ingredients came from the continent."
But the Di Chiera family maintain that while thousands of West Australians have them to thank for an introduction to the conti roll, it's not their own invention.
What's more, Perth is not the only place you can get a continental roll - but it's the only place that calls it that.
There's a version of this sandwich in different parts of the world. In New York it's called the Italian hero sandwich. In Los Angeles, it's the classic Italian. In Baltimore, the Italian cold cut. You can also find them on menus in the United Kingdom, Canada, and - yes - even other parts of Australia. Di Chera can list many of the locations and names off the top of his head.
There are slight variations, but the core ideas are there. Not to mention inspiration from their Italian origins.
"Italian food is always about food miles and using what's local in season with the local knowledge," Di Chiera says.
"So all these Italian migrants have come here with the knowledge and they've used what's local and what's in season. It's using their Italian knowledge and adapting to what is around them."
Tracey Corbin's letter from Bob Hawke
The 1980s was an interesting time for a kid faced with the question of mortality.
The AIDs epidemic was in full swing, the Cold War was on the news, and, as Sydney's Tracey Corbin recalls, the television ads could be terrifyingly graphic.
So it's no wonder that when her grandmother died, she was searching for a satisfying answer as to why we all have to leave this world.
"I just had all these questions about death and dying. And no one could really explain it to me in a way that made sense," she says.
"Death and grieving is such a weird riddle and to try and explain it to a child is really challenging and it is one of the most unexplainable things in life, really."
Still, a young Corbin needed answers. So she wrote a letter to the person she figured must be the smartest person in the country - the prime minister.
The year was 1983 and Bob Hawke had just been elected, when Corbin sat down to write him a letter, addressing the envelope "To: Bob Hawke, Prime Minister, Canberra". She waited eagerly for his response.
Despite the address, it eventually reached Hawke's desk - some three years later - and he responded.
"The question you asked me about dying is very hard to answer and I think that most of us have different ideas about why we do eventually all die," the letter read.
"Some people die because of unfortunate accidents, sometimes because they become so ill that doctors are unable to help them to recover. Perhaps when we grow very old our bodies get worn out, or certain parts break down, like parts in an old car. None of us can be sure of how long we will live. Because this is so I think you should try not to think too much about dying but think about all the nice things around you that make life so precious to us all."
Corbin had received many letters at that point, but this was the letter that changed her life.
From that moment, she started to pay attention to politics, watching her "mate" Hawke on the television. She began to love politics because of it - "it's my favourite sport" - and has since spent her life working in government policy roles and helping non-profits.
"It's a very clear letter and it just answers it really succinctly," Corbin says.
"And I've worked in policy and writing ministerial correspondence, and that would have been a really challenging letter to write because what do you write to a little kid whose grandma just died and [who's] querying why that happened?
"But especially when you're the prime minister because everyone's going to hold you accountable for ... writing that letter."
Truffy Maginnis' trophy
Australians were all cheering on the Matildas in the Women's World Cup last year. But before women's soccer captivated the attention - and hearts - of a nation, there was a mostly unknown community team in South Australia called the Adelaide Armpits. Founded in the 1980s, the team was made up of women who not only were allowed to play soccer, in any professional or amateur league, for the first time, but it was also the first openly queer team in Australia.
For Truffy Maginnis, it was a dream come true.
She had grown up loving soccer - "proper football", as she calls it - in Northern Ireland, but was never allowed to play it in any capacity. That was until she moved to Adelaide in the early 1980s and discovered a fledgling women's league.
It was her friend Anne Francis who first suggested that they, and other members of the queer community, put together a team.
They thought it would be a couple of years of fun, a chance for them to get together and play the sport they all loved but hadn't had a chance to partake in.
The Adelaide Armpits ended up being together for 35 years.
"At first we just wanted to have fun playing football," Maginnis says.
"It was only later it dawned on us but this was something that mattered. Not just to us, but to lots of other lesbian and gay women around the place. Especially other lesbian and gay women who played in other teams who were not out about their sexuality.
"And so seeing us added to a sense of greater courage of being open [about] who we were and who they were."
But the Adelaide Armpits didn't quite run like your average sports team. There was no coach, no captain and no hierarchy. They were all there to have fun, support each other and act as an equal unit.
When it came to the end-of-season awards, everyone received some recognition, with makeshift trophies.
In 1992, Maginnis' trophy was made from a wooden block, with a couple of band-aids sticking a Betadine-soaked cotton wool ball down. The inscription - stuck on with a bit of paper - read: "Johnson and Johnson Goal of the Year with Scabby Knees and Bruised Shins and Buggered knee".
It may have been more than 30 years, but Maginnis still remembers that goal like it was yesterday.
"If you do something, as a sportsperson, where everything comes together and you're suddenly in the zone, it stays in your brain. I scored other goals through the years but that one I can see as clear as if I scored it yesterday," she says.
"So when I was given that acknowledgement of it at the end-of-the-year [presentation], I was very, very moved and chuffed that everybody else thought it was a good goal as well."
As for the "scabby knees" part of the trophy, that was a reference to one of the team's previous games.
"We played a team a couple of weeks before who, for their own reasons, were wanting to kick us off the field - to use that blunt phrase," Maginnis says.
"So I was very bruised, I had a really bad cork in my thigh and I had scraped down the front of my shins. I was black and blue, and I had scabs all over me from that.
"And so that was why those things were mentioned on the trophy because I've been a bit bashed about. But even though it was a different team, it made the goal all the more sweeter."
- Tony Armstrong's Extra-Ordinary Things is showing at the National Museum of Australia until October 13. nma.gov.au
