Occupation: lecturer in the creative arts faculty, University of Wollongong

Suburb: Wollongong

Holiday location: Kolovai, Tonga

My family lived in Port Moresby (Papua New Guinea) and my parents taught at the University of Papua New Guinea. 

My father was originally Tongan and so every two years we went back to Tonga for Christmas. 

When we arrived in Tonga the whole family would be there to meet us and we would travel back to our village (Kolovai) in the back of a big open truck with all our cousins and aunties and uncles.

The house in Tonga was copied from a Canberra plan and was fully wired from 1965 but no electricity was connected to Kolovai for the next 15 years and by then the unused wiring, some of it chewed by rats, had to be replaced. We used  kerosene lamps in the evening.

My cousins taught me to dance and sing in Tongan; my aunties would teach us to paint tapa cloth and we helped with preparing food which was cooked on open fires or underground in umus.

It must have been a hard life for them but it was absolutely amazing for us kids. 

In the afternoons we would get in a cart with a horse pulling it and go to the beach. I never wanted to leave.

Tongans are very religous and on Sunday we had to get ready for church in our white long sleeved dresses and tupenus with taovalas or kie kie over the top. 

Then we would sit for two or three hours in church in the heat. 

There was a man standing at the door with a big stick to discipline any children who talked or giggled. 

The singing was fantastic but the sermon and praying would go on forever. 

After that we had lunch and went to choir practice for another two or three hours. We were not allowed to go to the beach or play cards or listen to the radio. 

We just lay around on mats outside, under the huge mango tree, and hoped for a mango to drop on us. We sang and talked and told stories.

There were often little feasts after church on Sundays and all the neighbours would cook and exchange food. 

There were often bigger feasts when they celebrated special birthdays with everyone busy preparing food, roasting pigs, making umu with fish, octopus and yams. 

We enjoyed those celebrations but not the long grace and prayers and swatting off flies. 

Village bands played in the evenings and everyone danced, with the children being allowed to stay up late.