The year was 1950 when my grandfather left Italy and first arrived in Australia with his two eldest sons. He first worked in a foundry in Footscray, a suburb west of Melbourne Victoria and then, after a time, Vincenzo opened a fruit shop in Sandringham where all his boys would eventually work.  Vincenzo worked double shifts between the foundry and the fruit shop saving for a house for his wife, Maria Concetta and the remaining seven children still in Calabria.

In 1955 my Nonna Concetta finally set sail for Australia with her remaining children including my father, Joseph who was eight years old. As a mother, I can only imagine what emotions my young Nonna would have been feeling as she sat on that boat for twenty-eight days on her way to a country she had no idea about. Many Italians during this time were in search of a better life in Australia and history has shown that these immigrating Italians fearlessly adapted to their new homelands.  Their strong work ethic combined with strong family values helped them though many difficult times and I believe that my father has passed these values down to me and my siblings.

Having my father always involved in the fruit business means that I have always been very spoilt with beautiful fresh fruit and vegetables delivered daily by dad but I was also blessed with a mother who was an excellent cook, so my love and appreciation of good quality ingredients and gorgeous food began at a very young age.  Our evening family meals were the time when we would all sit together and talk about our day.  We never saw our dad in the morning during the week as he used to leave the house in the very early hours to go to the market.

Once a year, my family would get together at my Uncle Dick and Aunty Nancy’s house for ‘sauce day’, where we would make ‘la conserva’, our pureed tomato sauce that would last the whole year.  We would process between thirty - forty cases of tomatoes in a day.  The tomatoes would be washed, cut in half and then passed though the puree machine which separated the skin and seeds from the pulp. This was always Nonno’s job.  The ‘passata di pomodoro’ was then poured into bottles and a sprig of basilica placed in the top (my job) before they were sealed and then placed in large barrels of water and left to boil for at least two hours.   Late afternoon once the work was finished, we would all sit down to a wonderful bowl of pasta, barbecue and salad.

While in Florence in 1993, I travelled to Calabria to see where my father had lived as a child.  I couldn’t believe how his home-town seemed to have been frozen in time.  The family home still standing, albeit empty and deserted and it seemed that this was how it was left on that day in 1955.  As I walked around the mostly deserted village, I came upon some old ladies slicing tomatoes in front of their house.  I stopped to watch, recognising the ritual of cutting tomatoes, passing them through the press and bottling the ‘passata’.  It was at this moment that I understood the tradition and how special our annual ‘sauce day’ was.

Of all his seven brothers and one sister, my father was the only one who didn’t marry an Italian and so therefore we were not brought up knowing the language.  When the whole family would get together for those large Italian feasts, Dad and his brothers would play cards after lunch (while the women did the dishes as was the usual custom) 

They would all speak Calabrese which is a dialect that I never understood and even now that I can speak Italian, I still don’t understand it and most Italians don’t either.  As a child, I took the obligatory Italian lessons at school and then extra classes after school but I never really learned much more than the days-of-the-week, numbers, colours and the basic greetings.  

When I was approaching my 21st birthday, mum & dad gave us the choice of a big party or the airfare to travel overseas.  I jumped at the chance to travel and started to plan my first overseas flight to Italy.  I decided that Florence was where I wanted to live and I would stay with an Italian family for the month while I was studying the language.  

In March of 1993, I boarded a one-way flight to Italy, full of excitement but also a ball of nerves, not knowing exactly what I was to find in my father's homeland and what adventures awaited me in this new chapter of my life.

A lot of thought went into packing my suitcase for my first trip to Europe.  After all, I was going to Italy, the fashion capital, and as a student of 'Moda' I felt the pressure of making a good impression.  I stayed later at work so that I could use the industrial sewing machines which helped me put together quite a few impressive creations using excess sample fabrics.
My black clogs and lime green Kicker boots with the matching green shorts were packed, my favorite two dresses from Scanlan and Theodore and of course some other necessities from my favourite stores of that era; Sempre L'Unico, Indigo and of course Sportsgirl and Portmans!  I packed my vintage beaded cashmere cardigan and well, the truth be told, I packed most of my bloody wardrobe!  Or so it seemed once I arrived in Rome and had to carry my suitcase for myself!!  (Good ol' Dad had helped me to the check-in gate and I didn't notice him struggling!!) My luggage was so incredibly heavy and as I didn't take the most direct route to Florence, I was soon to regret packing so much!

After passing through customs and immigration and making my way to the train station at Rome Fiumicino, I asked someone for directions to the correct platform for the train going to Florence.  I didn't realize that I had to go first to the Roma Termini and from there take a different train to Florence.  First error for this naive traveller even though I prefer to blame jetlag!
There were only a few platforms to choose from at the station and after being told by three different people, three different platforms, I finally boarded what I thought was the correct train.  After about 15 minutes, I asked the nice man sitting next to me if he spoke English.  Suddenly the confident girl who thought she knew enough Italian to get by was a bit too nervous to actually use her new language.  Real life situations were hardly the same as those once a week classroom lessons.  "Dove la stazione?", (where is the station) "Come ti chiami?" (what is your name?) and "Che ora sono?" (what time is it?) somehow weren't the phrases I needed right now!   My fellow passenger advised that he spoke 'poco' English and so I asked him how long before the train arrived at the Florence station.  He looked at me strangely before replying, "But this train is not going to Firenze!"  You can imagine the panic that began to rise inside my chest. The man sitting next to me advised that I would have to get off at the next station and then go to the Roma Termini where I could find the train that would take me to Florence.

Buongiorno Firenze