When I was just a baby, my dad left Italy to go and build accommodation huts for the Snowy Mountains Scheme. It was winter when he arrived, and the men had to stay in tents in the snow at first, although later they stayed in the accommodation they built. Three years...
My mum was the first person to buy an airplane ticket out of her village in Sicily. She came to Brisbane to visit family and never went back – she said that she smelt freedom here. At the time, she was engaged to my father, and apparently she said to him, ‘If...
Both my parents are Italians. Mum came out first with her parents when she was 9. Unfortunately, her mother died, and Mum had to leave school to look after her younger brother and sister. Later, she got married to my Dad, who she had met in Italy. He came to Australia...
I am Austrian and my husband was Italian, but we met when we were both working in a hotel in Geneva. Because we couldn’t speak each other’s languages, we had to speak to each other in French! We liked our life in Switzerland, but we would have had to reapply for our...
In 1956, there was a big frost in Italy, and nearly all the olive trees on our farm died. At that time, my father had friends in Australia telling him that money grew on trees, so he came over to see if it was true. Well, he arrived on a Saturday and started working...
