But as we have become a more multicultural and diverse nation, with people wanting healthier food, as well as vegan and gluten-free options, one could imagine the pie becoming a relic of a bygone Australia. Instead the opposite has happened: those who do pies well are booming.

This month the NSW Southern Highlands region is going all-out to identify itself as the nation's leader in pies - the annual Pie Time tourism push features pie-themed events, "hero pies", and high quality pastry wrapped around some slow-cooked cheap cuts.

Food historian Lauren Samuelsson, an honorary fellow at the University of Wollongong in southern NSW, said the place the pie holds in the Australian food pantheon was helped by a combination of available ingredients, a comforting blandness, and a desire for identity.

"Meat was so central to the Australian diet - in the 1800s, most of the pies that would have been eaten would have been made with mutton, as it was a cheap byproduct of the wool industry," she said.

"Later, when Australia's beef industry grew, they became beef pies and that plain mix of gravy with either steak or mince, it's really quite comforting, and it appealed to everyone."

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Dr Samuelsson said the pie's affordability, portability, and the fact it could be eaten on the street without utensils, helped it become enmeshed with Australian identity post-WWII.

"Australia was trying to define itself in those post-war years - we'd moved away from Britain, we needed to find some things that were Australian, that we could get behind," she said.

"The pie was a symbol of difference from Britain, and also a symbol of difference from America."

The Southern Highlands, of course, has competition when it comes to pie heartland. Victorians enjoy a special attachment to the pie through its association with Australian Rules football. And while no-one would accuse Four'n'Twenty of making the country's best pie, Victorian bakeries scoop the prizes at the Australian Baking Association's annual awards.

The 2022 competition has been on this week, with early results showing Victorian bakeries again leading the medals.

Consider the names of the top scorers: Lemongrass chicken, curry scallop, satay chicken, curry cauliflower, Tom Yum, pulled beef and japaleno, chicken biryani. There are plain mince and chunky steak categories, but they're not the main game.

This is how the pie has kept up with the times, Samuelsson said.

"We've still got that plain pie, but we have also started to see pies which break the rules a bit, which is something Australian food in general does - it takes things from everywhere and puts them together into something new.

"It's like the old Australia being incorporated into something that's fresh ... and probably a bit more representative of what Australia's like now."

One of those who's been willing to make his own rules is Hayden Bridger, whose Ulladulla pie shop on NSW's south coast has assumed near legendary status among surfers, fishers and locals. Hayden's Pies draws long queues with a changing menu of multiple curry pies, brisket and pulled pork, several vegetarian options, a world-beating salmon and prawn number, middle eastern and African influences, and daily specials that have included wild boar, camel and chickpea, goat curry, alpaca ragu, and wallaby stew, to catch the eye of the adventurous.

Bridger, who claimed to have not made a pie before he set up the shop in 2003, hasn't just evolved his flavours to keep up with trends - old photos show he has been innovating since the beginning.

"It's like when you used to walk into a pub and say 'give me a beer' - you didn't have a choice," Bridger told Weekender.

"Pies are similar - you don't just walk into a pie shops and say 'I'll grab a pie'. There's vegan, there's gluten free, there's chicken, there's game - to stay relevant it had to move, instead of staying standard mince.

"People's tastes have changed - as the country's got more multicultural, more diverse, we've always moved forward ... 70 years ago you wouldn't have been able to get a bowl of pasta in Australia. Fresh parmesan, people wouldn't have known what it was."

Bridger puts his success down to specialisation - not trying to do sourdough and sweets, just pies - as well as making all the elements from scratch, and butter.

"I've always experimented with flavours and dishes, it's just a matter of how to translate it into pastry. The 'dude food' thing at the moment, your briskets and your pulled porks, macs and cheeses, we get massive responses whenever we do something like that. We move with the times."

But his operation has more than survived: it's grown more popular each year.

"We've got better - we wanted to be self-taught and every pie we served, you never, ever rest, we just want to get better. As Ulladulla's got more known, we've got more known. And social media has been huge for us - if people go out of their way to show that they've been to your shop, instead of us trying to ram that down people's mouths, it's like the modern-day word of mouth."

He said there's no secret to a great pie - except for maybe a few main principles.

"Butter. Butter is big for us - I do enjoy making the puff in a traditional style. Then after that it's a long process - it's bloody hard work. I think we have 33 people working with us now, and it's all hands-on.

"Everything is from scratch: we make all our own harissa, our own curry paste, we smoke our own chillis. There's nothing we don't do from scratch. I think people notice the love we put into it."