Chloe Shorten - The Secret Ingredient: The Power of the Family Table

E very Saturday for the first twenty years of my life, my family sat down to lunch together. Whatever we were into at the timework, sport, dance, art, drama, some community gathering or just sleeping inall seven of us would gather in the kitchen of our parents home in Brisbane and squeeze around the table.

Those meals were rarely anything fancy. We might share fluffy bread that you could rip apart instead of slicing, cold meats, cheeses and salads. We kids would help Mum prepare the meal, set the table and tidy up afterwards, although there were times we would have a competition to see who could get out of washing up or drying dishes. Its the togetherness I remember most about these meals, not the predictable family conflicts or disciplining that were inevitably sometimes part of those meals. Its the connectedness that lingers in my mind. I knew this was my tribe. They were helping me grow up and I knew they were there for me through thick and thin.

Breakfast was a less rigid affair, but it was still an important meal. Mum would be at the kitchen bench making cooked meals a few mornings a week: eggs, sausages, bubble-and-squeak (cabbage, mashed potato and cheeseyum!), homemade hash browns, baked beans, bacon, cooked tomatoes with oregano. There would be kids coming in from swimming, netball, lifesaving, judo or rowing training, as well as sleepy ones still in their PJs. I have no idea how she managed to fit that culinary start into her busy days when I often just manage to get cereal, fruit and lunches organised for my own family. Dads role was to be the very early morning driver for the rowers in the family, coaxing us out of bed.

There was always a great deal of organisation going on between my parents: lists constantly written, notes left on benches, a lot of planning and talking. Im sure that this was what helped them keep it together. Organisation was the key to preventing chaos: there were five kids, with two intensively busy working parents. My dad, Michael Bryce, had an architecture and design practice for thirty years, which meant constant attention to work and saw him often at the dinner table after dinner, after breakfast, before lunchdrafting, scribbling, sketching and writing speeches or reports. My mum, Quentin Bryce, was lecturing in law at the University of Queensland and doing a lot of community and fundraising work for womens and childrens groups.