If you can still have a laugh with your dad, do it now and as often as possible

If you’re lucky enough to still have a dad, go and hug him right now. Tell him how much you love him, too – although, being an Aussie bloke, he’ll probably just mumble something back like “Ditto”.

When my darling dad died unexpectedly 10 years ago, what haunted me through the fog of grief was that I just couldn’t be sure if he knew how much I loved him.

My clever, kind, capable father was nicknamed Optic Merv, because his name was Mervyn and he worked in optic fibre. In the 1950s, he won a £100 prize as the fastest rugby league front-row forward in Australia. He used the money as a down payment on a block of land on Oyster Bay, where he built the house Mum still lives in.

As the family grew, so did the house, bedrooms mushrooming around us. I’m sure Dad was hoping for four boys he could train to play for his beloved Canterbury Bulldogs, but what he got instead were four feisty daughters.

Ours was a female-centric household and I fear we often took our darling dad for granted. He was just the overall-clad bloke who fixed everything that leaked, fumed or blew up. Conveniently, he was also always on hand to save us from snakes, leeches, ticks, tidal waves and tornadoes. Dad seemed able to deal with the scariest and hairiest of situations with nothing more than electrical tape, superglue, WD40 and the thwack of a tea towel. Whenever our car broke down in the outback, or a boat engine conked out in big seas, our unflappable father would break out his toolbox and save us from disaster.

But in a family of five females, it was inevitable that Dad would be on the periphery. He simply sat back, enjoying his gaggle of girls, as we cackled like kookaburras. It was only when he passed away (collateral damage from all those football concussions) that we truly understood how vital he was to our stability and contentment. Too late we realised he’d been our rock.

It was our father’s unconditional love which gave us four girls the courage and confidence to take on the world. With the loss of our protector, my self-sufficient sisters and I suddenly felt bewilderingly lost. Despite being independent, feminist career women in our 50s, we felt like little girls in desperate need of our darling daddy.

Australian dads of Merv’s generation are not demonstrative, preferring to show their love in practical ways. Our car tyres were constantly pumped; oil and water topped up. And when he asked me how many miles I was getting to the gallon, well, it was the equivalent of a Shakespearean love sonnet.