SPECIAL DELIVERY

ALONG WITH CARDS AND LETTERS, THE CHRISTMAS POST BRINGS ANNETTE ROBINSON A PUDDING FROM HER COUSIN ANNE.

This Christmas pudding is a family favourite.

EVERY YEAR, AS CHRISTMAS APPROACHED, so too did the anticipation of our family as to when we would receive one of ‘Anne’s Christmas puddings’. This was followed by a sigh of relief when one of ‘Anne’s Christmas puddings’ actually arrived by post from Kempsey, NSW, wrapped in many layers of brown paper to be put aside in a safe, cool spot awaiting the big day. Anne Gee (pictured with Mischief) has been making her beautiful Christmas puddings every year since she arrived in Kempsey as a young bride in 1957 to set up house with her husband, my cousin, Geoff, a veterinary officer for the Pastures Protection Board. The former Anne Lean had grown up, the eldest of five children, at Croom Park, a dairy farm on the Williams River at Fosterton, near Dungog, NSW. As you can imagine, Anne learnt to cook at a very early age, helping her mother to keep the family and the farmhands fed and watered. At Anne and Geoff’s 60th wedding anniversary celebration this year, her youngest brother, Don Lean, remembered back to that day in September when his big sister went off to get married. “My main worry was, now that Anne was getting married and going off to Kempsey, who was going to make my school lunches. Anne had always made them and now it looked like I was going to starve.” It’s not just Don who considers Anne, 87, a wonderful cook — any visitor to her home is sure to find themselves leaving with an ice-cream container full of Anzac or cornflake biscuits, and perhaps some rock cakes or raisin loaves, another family favourite. “My mother didn’t make the Christmas puddings,” Anne says. “It was Grandma Lean who made the puddings and gave me the recipe. My aunt, who lived at Forster, made Christmas cakes. When we would go for holidays at nearby Black Head Beach, every child would be given a piece of cake containing a threepence or sixpence, which had them running up the hill to the shop to spend it.” Anne’s daughters, Elizabeth and Helen, can remember the yearly ritual of making the Christmas puddings, usually as many as 12. They vividly recall the sound the puddings made, sitting on a dinner plate in a big pot, bubbling and rattling away on the stove, the steam condensing and running down the kitchen cupboards and the beautiful Christmas aromas filling the house. Everyone in the family was given or sent a pudding and are hoping they’re going to be lucky again this year.