The glossy poster occupied an entire wall behind the counter - not that it was a counter per se, more of a miserly lectern offering scant real estate on which my attendant was expected to juggle her many tasks while maintaining a balanced demeanour.

The photo fairly glowed with the prepossessing visages of four people; two adults, a man and a woman, and two children, a boy and a girl.

I assumed it was supposed to be a family but I wasn't convinced, not least because they appeared to be perfectly content.

The man (wearing groovy spectacles, of course, as were the others) had beautiful teeth. His skin was the smooth mocha of someone with Middle Eastern heritage. The woman was white with flowing red hair. The boy was as dentally and dermatologically blessed as the man and, likewise, the delicately freckled girl seemed a Celtic carbon copy of the woman.

Obviously, the intention was for customers to view this group of paid actors as blood relatives, presumably a mixed-race unit to reflect the fact, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, about one-in-three marriages in this country are intercultural.

To my eye, however, the laudable attempt to mirror modern society missed the mark because the children seemed in no way to share the genetic material of their opposite-sex parent. Brown dad, brown son, white mum, white daughter - blunt, simplistic, perhaps even a little cynical.

As a result, this hi-res mural celebrating consumerism and diversity seemed more like something you'd see on the side of a bus spruiking a reimagining of The Brady Bunch, updated and reconstituted for 21st century sensibilities.

It's the story, of a man named Ali ...

Not a bad idea, actually, but I assume the writers would have to work on the whole in-house maid thing? Also, less red meat. Times have changed (I'd still be dead keen to see who gets the attic).

I can't claim knowledge this shopfront of a few years ago was the very first example of advertising houses locking on to the idea of biracial relationships to promote various wares but I can say with certitude the concept has caught on.

TV advertising, in particular, is running with it.

Because my own family comprises various hobbling components bearing plastic brick-shaped scars on the soles of their (very soft, very white) feet, we've been watching a lot of LEGO Masters Australia (not as good as the past two seasons), so we've been flooded with sponsored content targeting schlubs like us.

And what's obvious this year, is the extent to which multiracial families are the next big thing.

We're knee-deep in ads for cars and food (so many cars, so much food) utilising this demographic device, and although casting agencies still seem to struggle with how the offspring of such unions are supposed to look, overall it's heartening to see the real world is finally seeping into the often very unreal world of selling us stuff.

The truth is, though, for the all the positives of using intercultural relationships in advertising, it remains a minefield of capitalistic overreach, something being debated in America right now.

US President Joe Biden was criticised for failing to read the room recently when he cited the use of interracial families in advertising as some kind of progress within the context of the Black Lives Matter era.

"I'm going to say something that's going to get me in trouble," Biden said.

"Think about it, if you want to know where the American public is, look at the money being spent on advertising. Did you ever, five years ago, think every second or third ad out of five or six would be biracial couples?"

You get the somewhat garbled point Biden is trying to make, but as was suggested in response to his rather reductive assertion, a few Super Bowl commercials does not equality make.

It doesn't help, either, many in the States are justifiably offended when one of those biracial couples does pop up to flog home-delivered meals, the male of the pair is often white, perpetuating a stubbornly blithe message of cultural dominance.

Despite such ham-fisted gestures and so many racially charged issues festering across America, Australia and the rest of the planet, things are improving. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences assured us as much this week via its frocked-up awards night, the product of an industry well known for its slavish devotion to reality.

All jokes aside, however, the very real possibility the next Superman movie will star a black actor in the titular role is genuine cause for celebration. It's an even better idea than The Ali Bunch.

I've mentioned before how as much as living in a rural Australian village - as we do - comes with many wonderful advantages and just as many wonderful disadvantages, the kids do sometimes miss out on some important elements of modern life and, it has to be said, their exposure to other races and cultures (besides their father's Rogan josh) is, regrettably, close to non-existent.

We all know how unhealthy a monoculture can be, in the natural world, or our own, and I hope by choosing to live where we do, we're not blinkering the kids too much.

But sometimes we don't give children enough credit.

This summer, we had a great holiday up north with, it seemed, the rest of NSW.

It was while at some water slides, I looked around and realised ours was the only white family (except for another over at putt-putt, where else?) in the precinct. Hundreds of Aussie parents and their kids with links to the subcontinent and Africa were having a fantastic day alongside our (painfully drab) Irish-English-German lot.

I watched the melting pot and thought how lucky our kids were to be so far removed from their bland home life. On the car ride back to the rental, I thought the day should even be used as some kind of empathy training, along the lines of American "diversity educator" Jane Elliott's groundbreaking 'blue eyes/brown eyes' classroom exercises. Locking with my trio's own blue eyes/hazel eyes via the rearview mirror, I dadsplained how their experience as "the only white kids in a water park" was the same for members of minorities in this country, only they felt it for a lifetime, not just a couple of hours.

"Were we?" our youngest said.

He hadn't even noticed.

Perhaps it's time I didn't, either.