And now there is a national day to recognise the product. Last Thursday (June 16) was National Vegemite Day, first celebrated only six years ago when home-grown rock group 5 Seconds of Summer launched what has become an annual celebration.
Almost 70 years after that jingle was created those same devotees of the product remain in a similarly upbeat frame of mind as they tick off the almost-staple component of most Australian breakfasts from their weekly shopping list.
And that passion has been passed on through the generations to our modern day primary schoolers, who share a similar wide smile when the yellow label with the familiar red logo on its front is brought out of the pantry.
At Rochester Primary School in fact, business manager Janice Povey is responsible for regularly filling the lunch time void left by students who have arrived for their educational day without midday sustenance.
She explained that she is constantly preparing Vegemite sandwiches in freezer bags and — on a daily basis — setting some aside in the morning when it is discovered a student has forgotten their lunch.
And they are as popular as ever, warmed up in the microwave and then distributed to the eager five to 12-year-olds at the halfway point of the day.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world mostly cringes when they are adventurous enough to embark on their initial taste test of the national food icon.
Such is the Australian connection to the product that was first sold in 1923 that a West Australian university researcher noted the following in his widely-read paper on the product: “Vegemite is one of the clearest markers of cultural identity that has yet been reported.”
“And early exposure is an important, though not necessary, condition for acquiring a taste for it,” he continued.
Australian food technologist and chemist Cyril Callister was responsible for the invention of Vegemite, which is made most mostly from leftover brewer’s yeast.
Australians take something of a perverse pride in just how much the spread is detested by international visitors to our shores, and accordingly, have extended Vegemite’s presence into a variety of non-essential scenarios.
Among those is as a filling in Pizza Hut’s stuffed crust and in modern times as a robust flavour addition to vegan and vegetarian dishes.
