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Back then I was too young to learn her recipes, but the flavours of Popo’s food left an impression that stayed with me long after she moved back to Timor and later passed away. I was mesmerised by the steam that rose from her pot of babi kecap: cubed pork belly bubbling in a rich bath of garlic, shallots, chilli and kecap manis. I remember watching Popo grinding the ingredients for her creamy peanut sauce to a paste before she generously drizzled it over vegetables and boiled eggs for her gado-gado salad. The usual Australian fare of sausages, steaks and salads cooked on the barbecue by my parents was joined by unmissable chicken satay basted in kecap manis (sweet soy sauce) and lime. Popo’s recipes wove themselves seamlessly into our repertoire of recipes and onto our dining table. My childhood mealtimes were filled with sausage rolls and peanut sauce – not a classic Indonesian combination, but one that sums up the influence of growing up with an Australian mother and a Chinese-Indonesian father. Our living room was filled with honeyed vocals, ukuleles, flutes and guitars s ongs of lost loves and Indonesian island life that put sand between your toes. Indonesian folk music would play on the record player, breathing melodies called keroncong. It was a gift to us from Popo, who wanted to clothe us in our heritage.

When we were young girls, my mother would dress my sister and me in batik on special occasions: vibrant, wax-patterned dyed fabric that showcased the intricate handiwork of Indonesian artisans.

My family and I started visiting Indonesia only when I reached adulthood before that, my grandmother Margaret Thali, who we called Popo, brought her Indonesian home to Sydney when she came to live with us. My earliest memories of Indonesia occurred outside of it, across the Timor Sea and over land in Sydney, Australia. There, where shops lined the ground floor with the owners’ homes perched above, was my grandmother’s house, the place where my story begins. Surrounding the pier were the winding narrow streets that made up the old town, home to an eclectic mix of worn, tiled and rainbow-coloured terraces. The pier, where local fishermen waited for their catch of the day to bite, was stained with splashes of black, the last ink squirts of life from squid and cuttlefish attempting to escape their captors. A bustling collective of food vendors dotted the shoreline, the smoke from their coal and wood fires blurring the glowing horizon, the fragrance of lemongrass, kaffir lime and garlic filling the air. The first time I watched the sky bleed tones of orange and red as the sun set over the sea in my father’s home town of Kupang, Timor, it struck me as a moment of coming home – but to a place I had never been before.