Vegemite Homesickness

People think of Vegemite—they think of Australia. It’s a given.

When I think of Vegemite, I think of Japan—Tokyo specifically. When I first started working in Japan, about half of my co-workers were from Australia. Someone would inevitably ask if I had ever tried it and I would fend off with “Only heard about it in a song from Men at Work.”

Eventually, I ended up eating it and keeping a jar in my locker at work. We had a toaster and a few of us would do toast and tea at four.

That year when I went back to visit my family, there was no Vegemite to be found. So the following year, I took a small jar back for my month vacation in Alaska, thinking any unused would be safe for the next year when I returned. “I have never heard of it ever going off,” a coworker assured me.

The next year I was rooting through familial cabinets looking for my three-quarters-full jar of Vegemite. When asked about the location of it, I got the following reply—“It made very good stock.” It was gone. Forever. Here I was in Alaska without it and this was before Amazon. 

The closest thing we had up in our isolated location was Marmite. I should have been grateful. I wasn’t. Close, but it just gets all wispy and stringy. There is something off-putting about strands of brown across your tie, or oddly enough, on an eyelid.

I decided to make my own. It was an experience in creativity. I looked in the cupboard. Bouillon cubes are sort of the same concept, just not in a paste-like consistency. If Vegemite was inspired by Marmite and Bovril then I must be on the right track.

It was a dismal failure. I made an insipid paste that melted into the cube granules (in a word, “Yuck”). I grabbed a beef cube and immediately I could hear my friend Jodee’s voice in my head say, “Now you’ve gone and made Bovril?” So I went back to a simple mess of margarine and vegetable bouillon. It didn’t really work, but my homesickness abated in the distraction.

During my trip last year to the motherland of Vegemite, I grabbed a large jar for myself, and a tube. Another co-worker’s voice in my head said, “Never a tube!” I flinched, guiltily looked both ways and took it anyway. At the time there was a shortage of Vegemite in Tokyo and like anyone who has lived abroad knows, when you see it and you want it, stock up. 

At Narita customs, the inspector saw my final total of 7 Vegemites and said, ”Oh, Vegemites! Souvenirs?” I held my head up and said in reply, “Personal use.”