WE had a wonderful conversation on my radio show last week about the massive changes to Australia’s culinary landscape in the last 40 years. These are changes that are strikingly obvious in Canberra.

The discussion was inspired by my mate Mike Crowther who was chatting on Facebook about the distinct lack of international food outlets in western Sydney when he was growing up there in the ‘60s and ‘70s.

Mike recalls that he didn’t eat garlic bread until he was 18 and didn’t sample Chinese food till he was 19.

“There were no ethnic restaurants in the western suburbs. Wogs ate with their families, not in restaurants, and it wasn’t till the late ‘70s that Australians from my part of the continent started to get game enough to try,” he wrote.

Mike’s experience is similar to mine.

Ours was a “meat-and-three-veg” household. My mother’s kitchen repertoire had about 12 main meals in it. She did them all very well, but variety was not on the agenda.

She did make a dish that she described as a curry… but in hindsight, it clearly wasn’t. She also served something that she referred to as spaghetti bolognaise, which we would smother in tomato sauce.

I can recall the first time we ate as a family at a dingy little Chinese restaurant in Northam in WA in the 70’s. I marvelled at the new exotic flavours unlike anything that came out of my mum’s kitchen.

I would have been 12 and it was the first time I’d ever laid eyes on a snow pea. And I can recall that one of these dishes featured thin slices of ginger. The flavour blew my mind.

Apparently, the first genuine Chinese restaurant to open in Canberra was Happy’s in the early ‘60s. Happy’s is still trading in Garema Place, which I gather is the original location. They did takeaway back then, but you had to bring your own pot. How quaint.

Former Duntroon cadet Rod called the program with his memories of Happy’s.

“We’d go and have a big feed every few weeks,” he said. “It really was the place to be.”

He recalled a night when he and his friends were particularly rowdy and told to leave. As he was ordering them from the premises, the owner of Happy’s reportedly told Rod and his crew, “Me not happy no more”.

Aren’t we spoilt for international cuisine in Canberra now?

What was your first international food experience either in or out of Canberra ?