Maybe that was because Vincent’s got in first with its TV advertising, right back in 1956, when it was responsible for the first advertising slogan of the television era: “TV stands for Take Vincent’s!”

Bex, on the other hand, had the better slogan, even if it was the result of popular mockery rather than its advertising agency. Anytime you exhibited stress you’d be told to: “Have a cup of tea, a Bex and a good lie-down”.

Both headache powders were banned in 1977, and not a minute too soon. The rate of one of the cancers they caused dropped 52 per cent in the two decades after the ban.

Luckily, there were still plenty of other ways you could express your tribal allegiances.

As a young smoker, there was the choice of cigarette: Winfield Blue (blokey bloke) or Benson & Hedges (sophisticated bloke). Or, for women: Alpine (“they’ll do me, thanks”) or Virginia Slims (“this deadly habit is somehow a mark of my feminism”).

Whatever your choice of smoke, they could be tucked into the back pocket of your jeans, which depending on your tribe, would be either Amco or Wranglers (or maybe Levis, which I realise destroys my “choice of two” theory). The smokes, though, could be enjoyed with a beer: Tooheys or KB. The latter was slightly sweeter, and thus derided: “Kids’ Beer”.

In the kitchen, it was coffee vs tea and Milo vs Nesquik, but the biggest division was between the white bread brigade and the grain gurus. Then came the choice of what spread to add: butter or margarine.

Some of the choices were a nod to social class. Rugby Union was posher than Rugby League; The Sun newspaper was posher than The Mirror; and watching the ABC was more la-de-da than the commercials.

Department stores were partly about social class, but also about religion. David Jones was there for the Protestants and Mark Foy’s for the Catholics. Some say it worked for banks as well: ANZ for the Catholics and the Bank of NSW for the Proddies.

Elsewhere, there was Coles vs Woolworths, Labor vs Liberal, Rural vs City, and then the big one: Home Delivered Soft Drinks vs “No way. Are you mad? Do you think we are made of money?”

In terms of soft drinks, my family were definitely part of that second tribe.

Is it only Australia in which people define themselves in this way?

Talking about these dualities on the radio recently, a listener from an Indian background texted in: “If global duality counts, this one is from India. If you are from North India you owned a Hawkins pressure cooker, and a South Indian owned a Prestige.” Both sides, said my texter, had contempt for the cooking equipment used by the other.

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My correspondent, a Hawkins-hating South Indian, ended up marrying a North Indian. “We now own both pressure cookers and they are used depending on who is cooking that day.”