By Narelle Coulter
Jan Ketcher’s unit is filled with the sweet aroma of baking fruit cake.
Jan grabs a tea-towel and slides the cooked cake out of the oven. It is perfectly browned on top, a few black currants poking up from the golden crust.
Another cake rests on the sideboard wrapped in tin foil.
Each Christmas Jan bakes three cakes – one she will ice with marzipan to have with family on Christmas day, one to give to a friend and one for herself.
Her cakes, she explains, are “quite rich” being packed with one-and-a-half kilograms of mixed fruit.
“I like a piece of cake Boxing Day morning with a cup of tea – disgusting!” Jan said with a wicked grin.
At 83 Jan loves Christmas as much now as she did as a child.
Jan grew up in war-time London and moved to Australia with her husband Ed and four children in the early 1970s.
She was born in Twickenham and her childhood Christmas memories are intertwined with those of air raid sirens, black-out curtains and ration coupons.
Jan was five when war broke out. Her father was in the navy serving on a destroyer. He saw six years of active service. For three years his young family didn’t see him at all.
“Food was short. I remember one Christmas having roast rabbit for Christmas dinner but we enjoyed it,” said Jan.
“Gifts were small. As kids we got things like books, knitted gloves, a small bar of chocolate. Sometimes an orange, but they were rationed during the war.
“We did have Christmas cake but it was a very light fruit cake and very small. And it wasn’t iced. You couldn’t ice cakes during the war. Not even wedding cakes had icing.”
She remembers making paper chains to string up as decorations.
“Those years were hard but everyone was in the same boat. We didn’t think anything of it. We weren’t scared. My mum must have been but she didn’t show it.”
In the 1950s when Britain shrugged off its war-time austerity, Christmas also took on a fresh sparkle.
“After the war Christmas became more elaborate. The block-out curtains were gone then and people put up more decorations in their windows.”
Jan remembers being delighted if it snowed in London in December and still misses the Salvation Army choirs singing carols on street corners.
After school and secretarial work, Jan eventually pursued her dream of becoming a nurse. She and Ed met at a hospital dance.
Struggling to make ends meet in 1970s Britain, they decided to migrant to Australia in 1971.
“We were fed up struggling to pay the bills. It was very difficult. We managed, but only just. We realised Australia offered a better opportunity for our children and it has.
“The six of us got on a plane and we didn’t really know what we were coming to.”
“I saw it as a challenge and an adventure.”
The Ketchers’ first Aussie Christmas in 1971 was “blistering hot“. They were living in Nangana at the time. They later moved to Emerald and then Narre Warren.
“We went to my cousin’s house and had a barbecue. It was totally different but we really enjoyed it.
“My husband loved his hot Christmas dinner so he wasn’t too happy. But it was his birthday in April so I said ‘I’ll do you a hot roast dinner for your birthday instead’.
This Christmas Jan will join her extended family at her daughter’s house in the country.
In the corner of her tidy unit is a sparsely decorated tree. Next to is a carefully arranged nativity scene which has been in the family for more than 30 years.
Each year Jan picks a theme for her Christmas wrapping. This year it’s gold.
“I’m like a big kid. I get so excited the kids say to me ‘oh mum, there’s still a week to go,’ but I can’t sleep. I just love it.”
