Christmas was a traditional affair when Julia Morris was a child. The Catholic family would attend mass the night before in their hometown of Gosford, open their gifts the morning of and then hit the road to see their Sydney-based relatives.
“My father was from a really big family,” she says of the annual pilgrimage. “I remember eating all that food and then chucking it up on the windy road. These were the days when we didn’t have seatbelts. Surely it’s asking for trouble to put little kids in the car and drive them – in those days it was a two-hour drive – just for a great big family fight we weren’t involved in. Everyone drank until they were silly as ticks (never the driver though) and then fought – that was