“Is this cheese?  Is this Cheese Toastie Day?”

Pre-Covid, the Hunter Valley Family Law Practitioners Association held an annual Family Law Conference that attracted family law practitioners from throughout the state to listen to specialist guest speakers and Judges from around Australia. The conference was held over 2 days, with a dinner and dance at the end of the 1st day.  It became a convention in recent years for our family law team to host an informal post dinner/dance recovery session with cheese toasties, cleansing ales and pots of tea for the insomniacs and those who love to chat.  The cheese toasties were the anchor, and there was never a shortage of volunteers or those who love to hang around kitchens at parties to help create cheese toastie magic.

Cheese toasties have been around for a long time. Sizzlers opened in California in the year of my birth, and later served its first slice of cheese toast at its restaurant on Hollywood Boulevard in 1968.  15 September 2022 is National Cheese Toast Day in the US and some Sizzlers offer free cheese toast to their customers.  

At the risk of sounding like a Betoota Advocate headline, [“Aging Family Lawyer who still does not get Halloween being celebrated in Australia, flip flops and urges hungry, fair-minded Australians to adopt 15 September 2022 as a National Cheese Toastie Day] I question why don’t we celebrate 15 September 2022 as our own Cheese Toastie Day.  Seriously, what’s not to like about cheese toasties?    Even MKR in 2022 devoted a whole episode to cheese toastie fusion.  

Our Governor General and Prime Minister travel to the UK on 15 September 2022 to represent Australia at the funeral of the Queen Elizabeth II.  I am quietly hoping they will be munching Cheese Toasties on the RAAF VIP jet as they wing their way to the UK on our yet to be proclaimed National Cheese Toastie Day. 

Sending Australian cheese and politicians to the UK is almost a tradition.  In 1947 John Henry Sloan and others who carried on a business named “Regal Cream Products” went to the High Court to challenge what appeared to be the then Government’s unconstitutional restriction of our rights to retain cream and cheese products for our own consumption.  In the case of Sloan v Pollard the High Court of Australia considered whether the Cream (Disposal and Use) Order, whose purpose was to increase the exportable surplus of butter and cheese to the UK, was within the defence powers of the Constitution, notwithstanding that war time hostilities had ceased in 1945.  Regal Cream Products and a free market lost, but the UK population won the right to enjoy our regulated surplus cheese products, which I hope they duly placed on some bread and butter and grilled- cheese toastie style. 

Anyhow, “Happy Unofficial Cheese Toastie Day”.  Or as Hoge’s might have added, “Chuck another Toastie under the griller!”

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