‘My Grandad Invented Vegemite… And He Didn't Make A Cent!'

Jamie’s grandfather helped shape this momentous part of Australia’s history

- Josie Agostino

When Jamie Callister looked inside his lunchbox when he was a schoolboy, it was fairly good odds there’d be a butter and Vegemite sandwich.

“I got sick of it in my lunchbox, that’s for sure!” laughs Jamie, 59, as he remembers simpler times growing up in the 1960s in rural Victoria.

“It’s such an Australian childhood thing. We all had parents who were really busy and the quickest thing for school lunches was a Vegemite sandwich. But really, we loved it.”

It’s a good thing Jamie turned out to be a fan of the famous salty black paste because his grandfather was Dr. Cyril Callister, the chemist and food scientist who invented it way back in 1922.

“I was about six or seven, and we were sitting around the table having breakfast and Dad said, ‘By the way, my old man invented Vegemite,’” Jamie says. “And we went, ‘What, really?!’”

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS