I spent my first 10 years in the Commonwealth. I come from cricket, crumpets, cucumber sandwiches, the Queen.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
My first inkling of what the Commonwealth might really mean came only when I escaped the oddly British-tinged Asia I had known and went to live in the Philippines.
It is easy enough to define what the Commonwealth is not. Indeed this is quite a popular pastime.
When I was a child in the 1940s and early 1950s, my parents and grandparents spoke of Britain as home, and New Zealand had this strong sense of identity and coherence as being part of the commonwealth and a the identity of its people as being British.
Being a young Kiwi lad, a young Polynesian boy, I was pretty close to my family. But when I moved to Sydney, I went from training twice a week, playing touch footy with my mates, to working full-time as a labourer and training professionally.
Try and understand: cricket was played by Commonwealth countries only; now it has started in other countries as well, and I am proud of that.
Although my father is English, I was brought up in Australia.
I talk about being Australian a lot.
Both my parents are English and came out to Australia in 1967. I was born the following year. My parents, and immigrants like them, were known as '£10 poms.' Back then, the Australian government was trying to get educated British people and Canadians - to be honest, educated white people - to come and live in Australia.
I was a keen sportsman, and became school captain in soccer and cricket.
'Commonwealth' is not a word I ever used growing up in Colombo. There, in the late 1950s, it would have meant little more than New Zealand lamb and Anchor butter at the cold stores.