SEGMENTO MAGAZINE ISSUE VIII

Issue VIII

March/May 2016

Garlic’s natural healing powers

L la Lovely Gift

An artistry known as

the Italian Design RefLEction on Pasolini Ladies of Leisure

The many Degrees of a CHAMPION

PLUS The craft of homemade winemaking www.segmento.com.au

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A romantic at heart

All our cheeses are handmade and preservative-free

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WHO ARE WE

“There is nothing more temporary than a permanent immigrant!�

An immigrant is always looking for a home, the further away they are, the stronger is their quest for a home.

Italians always have had their roots deeply planted in their millenarian culture but they become completely oblivious to the fact that they have packed their historic and rich inheritance into their luggage when migrating to Australia.

We like to hear their stories, we provide them with a forum to articulate their views, whether they are multinational enterprises, successful business people or young disoriented talents.

Segmento aims to be the megaphone of the Italian Australian community. Its objective is to become the vital link between their Italian roots and the new culture of multi ethnicity that prevails in Australia.

Daniele Curto

endorsement

OUR

Contributors

Valentina Bonatti

Agata Grimaldi

Hayley J. Egan

Laura D’Angelo

vale@livinglabellavita.com.au

agata.grimaldi@googlemail.com

hayley.j.egan@gmail.com

lauramartina.dangelo@yahoo.it

www.hayleyeganart.com

www.thealrightplace.wordpress.com

www.valentinabonatti.com

Ilaria Gianfagna

Salvatore Rossano

Marco Maria Cerbo

www.justaustralia.it

Archimede Fusillo

santataranta@gmail.com

(Consul General of Italy)

ilaria@justaustralia.it

www.salvatorerossano.com

Ivano Ercole

Elizabeth Wisser

Enrico Massei

Gerardo Papalia

editor@segmento.com.au

enquiry@amalsa.com.au

www.amalsa.com.au

gerardo.papalia@monash.edu

www.amalsa.com.au

Nelly Altson

­Marisa Ferraro

Deirdre MacKenna

nellyaltson@gmail.com

www.oncebittentwiceshy.com.au

projects@dmackenna.com

www.galeriadenomad.com

Bronte Dee Jackson bronte@brontedeejackson.com www.brontejackson.com

­Johnny Di Francesco ­ johnnydifrancesco@segmento.com.au

Gallery

A Destination You’ll Love to Discover Bini Gallery

Contemporary Jewellery 62 Smith Street, Collingwood Vic 3066 Tel. 03 9486 0145 www.binigallery.com.au

Founder and Managing Director Daniele Curto

DANIELE CURTO

daniele.curto@segmento.com.au

041 8891 285

Associate Editor Ivano Ercole editor@segmento.com.au

Co-Editor Hayley J. Egan

Graphic Artist Aurora Delfino Creative Consultant Imbarani Poonasamy Photographers Paco Matteo Li Calzi, Daniele Curto.

For features, articles and editorial submissions: segmento@segmento.com.au 041 8891 285

For advertising please contact:

equires

marketing@segmento.com.au 041 8891 285

Cover photo credits Photographer Paco Matteo Li Calzi

www.pacomatteolicalzi.com

Contributors Valentina Bonatti Agata Grimaldi Hayley J. Egan Laura D’Angelo Ilaria Gianfagna Archimede Fusillo Salvatore Rossano Marco Maria Cerbo (Consul General of Italy) Ivano Ercole Elizabeth Wisser Enrico Massei Gerardo Papalia Nelli Altson Deirdre MacKenna ­Marisa Ferraro ­Johnny Di Francesco ­ Bronte Dee Jackson

Segmento media partner

EDITORIAL The perpetual search of

home

38

“Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita” (halfway through the journey of my life) I have become an immigrant...

The major consequence in one’s life of becoming what is called an ‘immigrant’ is, above all, the loss of control.

I believe that the decision to leave (as of migrants for economic reasons) is in most cases being long pondered, weighed up and independently made. However being an immigrant implies a series of insidious challenges, coping with new emotions and adjustments in everyone’s life. A conundrum!

12

I do not come from a family of migrants. Questioning my parents about any ancestors or family members who would have settled in some parts of the world, I could not get anything out of them.

During my teenage years the only contact I had with the immigration world was the Italian songs that told the torment of the migrants: Neapolitan to be precise (the ones that my father would sing around the house with an emphasis and theatricality typical from the South).

“Lacreme Napulitane” or “Addio a Napoli” they represented for most of my life only pleasant and old-fashioned melodies. Even for my father they were nothing more than songs, nice songs whistled during his walks or looking out the window, shirtless.

The loss of control that I felt at the beginning of my arrival has something to do with the word itself. Immigrato, (immigrant in English) in Italian it has a dramatic sense of final and definitive. A person who left his home country for good with little hope or volition to go back. The word immigrato gives you a status and like any other social condition it freezes you and suspends you into limbo; it sees to it that a single decision becomes the status of your life. Even the definition of ‘expatriate’ does not make me feel any better. Rather it makes me feel inadequate.

For this reason I recently started to consider what it may possible entail, just the thought of returning to my homeland. Return, perhaps, only to leave again.

Going home is not necessarily the termination of the migration cycle, but one of its expressions. Will my life begin again to have an unfinished hallmark? Will I be able to see myself as a human being “nel mezzo del cammin della sua vita?” In a nutshell, I want to scrape off the burden of being inalterable and motionless.

Maybe to be fleeting makes us feel younger and vital.

15 23 28

However, hypochondria, I found, can lead to creativity and very inspirational thoughts, and I had the conundrum completely backwards. Recently I stumbled into a citation from Risorgimentale Italian writer Ippolito Nievo and hit me deep: “It’s because of these wanderings of mine that I have been putting together my own particular idea of a homeland”.

Homeland is a concept, an ‘idea’ that takes shape in different places and materializes with the practice of philosophy. As Novalis wrote, “lucubrate is the urge to be at home everywhere. Really homesick!”

I learnt that being an immigrant confront us with the search of one’s identity.

Exposes us to questions difficult to fully answer. Guilt creeps in.

But asking and calling into question “who we are?” is somehow a journey to the homeland.

It has been said: “There is nothing more temporary than a permanent immigrant!” An immigrant is always looking for a home, the further away they are, the stronger is their quest for a home.

Ultimately, I have been asked: “Where are you really going?” My answer is now: “Always home”.

I am sure my mother would be happy to hear this...

29

11

CONtents

13 Cover Story

The many degrees of a champion

by Nelli Altson

16

Regulars Living La Bella Vita

11

Hands on Fire

19

Connecting the present with the forgotten past

22

Missing Italy but finding Australia the right place to be

33

by Valentina Bonatti

by Johnny Di Francesco

22

16

by Deirdre Mackenna

by Ilaria Gianfagna

Reflection on Pasolini

by Gerardo Papalia

23

Amalsa, 457 Skilled Visa Program

36

Garlic’s natural healing powers

13

by Enrico Massei and Elizabeth Wisser

by Agata Grimaldi recipe by Chef Alessandra D’Angelo

The craft of homemade winemaking

38

A Future in their Past

40

Ten Years a Stranger

35

Culture Bites

27

Ladies of Leisure

34

Australian Diary

42

by Home make it

by Archimede Fusillo

by Hayley J. Egan

by Bronte Dee Jackson

by Marisa Ferraro

by Ivano Ercole

24 Features

37

The bromance behind Zero95

15

The Italian scientist and professional community in WA

by Laura D’Angelo

by Ivano Ercole

12

Four second from Paradise. The revolutionary Pope’s Jubilee

by our correspondent in Italy Omar D’Incecco translated by Hayley J. Egan

24

Lola Lovely Gift

29

An artistry known as the Italian Design

by Laura D’Angelo

by Marco Maria Cerbo (Consul General of Italy)

21

Getting to know the new President of the Italian Republic Sergio Mattarella by our correspondent in Italy I. E. Laudieri Di Biase

28

The art of turning living spaces into something special

by Laura D’Angelo

Segmento Magazine March/May 2016

WORDS VALENTINA BONATTI

LIVING LA BELLA VITA

Lessons from living abroad We all know that travel is a very important aspect of our personal growth. I believe that living abroad is even a better and more powerful experience. You not only discover different ways of living, talking, behaving, eating, having fun etc., but it is like they become part of you. This is amazing because, if you take the time to think about it and create awareness, you can really learn a lot about yourself and how you see the world.

Below are three major points I have learned in my six years of being an expatriate.

DO NOT JUDGE

1

We tend to judge what we don’t know and often it is too far away from our ideas and prospective. Judging always divides something between good or bad We all come from a variety of backgrounds and experiences; therefore, we all have a different view of the world. We see things through different eyes, we respond differently to situations and we get upset for different things too.

We can’t judge something outside ourselves with what is inside ourselves, instead, we should try to understand other people’s points of view and really connect with their emotions and feelings. Judging, even ourselves, always generates a negative vibration that makes us consume energy, positivity and happiness.

2

Put things into perspective The sentence that says “you really understand the value of something when you don’t have it anymore” is very true. On the opposite, we always say that the neighbour’s grass is always greener.

I needed to go away from my homeland to really understand how much I love my land and all it comes with (even if is not perfect).

When you see, live, experience different things and some of them are really far away from the normality you are used to, you can really start to appreciate what you already have and be grateful for it.

3

Understand what you most value in life We all have different sets of values that come from our family, culture and society but we often are not aware of them. Values are the compass of our life, they are what make us take our choices or make us feel a particular emotion rather than a totally different one.

Travel and living abroad is a perfect opportunity to become even more aware of what we really value in life. And from this awareness, I have made the decision to return back home for good.

“

If you are an expatriate or have been one, I would love to hear your story or any comment about this article. Until then, I wish you well in whatever you are doing with your life.

Valentina Bonatti was born and raised in Piacenza, in the north of Italy. After living in Melbourne for the past 6 years, she has decided to move back to Italy. With her knowledge of Life and Business Coaching she is now helping expats around the globe to live a balanced emotional life so they may truly live their Bella Vita. She is also helping students to re-gain motivation towards studying as well as to find their future direction in life whether through university studies or work.

She is the author of the manual “Powerful Change. 12 steps to re-light your inner fire.”

For more tips about this topic: vale@livinglabellavita.com.au

Contact www.livinglabellavita.com.au Website www.valentinabonatti.com

“You really understand

the value of something

when you don’t have it anymore” Valentina Bonatti REGULARS 11

words OMAR D’INCECCO (our correspondent in Italy) TRANSLATED BY HAYLEY J. EGAN

Four Seconds from Paradise The Revolutionary Pope’s

Jubilee

8 December FIAT LUX: “Illuminare la nostra casa comune” Giubileo Opening. Basilica and Cupola di San Pietro light projections.

I

t is December but the sun is pounding over Rome and transforms a winter's day into the subtle suggestion of an early Spring. Everything is ready. In the Vatican City, thousands of pilgrims are crowding into the Colonnato del Bernini in a kind of Christian apotheosis, full of emotion. It is believed that the Holy Gate cleanses them from all sin, and St. Peter's enraptures the believers with its stunning architecture.

Heaven on earth could have no better setting.

The most revolutionary Pope in the Church's history decided this, and some may say, for good reason.

At the Pope's solemn announcement, the faithful fight back tears, and the Holy Door opens with the elegance of a ballerina. It is seen through the eyes of one hundred thousand devotees standing just a few meters away, and also, through millions of screens all over the world: This is the Jubilee, the Christian world’s biggest show.

In front of that Holy Gate, so close to Heaven, there are dozens of armed soldiers and undercover policemen ready for any violent eventuality. In that holy ground, love and mercy co-exist, but it seems they can only survive when defended by weapons.

In the Catholic Church the Jubilee is considered the year of forgiveness, reconciliation, conversion and sacramental penance. The Jubilee is called "Holy Year", not only because it begins and ends with solemn holy acts, but also because it is intended to promote the sanctity of life. Jubilee means ‘moment of happiness’ and when celebrated on specified dates, can be something ordinary. When it is proclaimed for some special event, it becomes extraordinary.

The official start of the Jubilee takes place with the opening of St. Peter's Basilica's Holy Gates. The Holy Gates of other churches are opened in the following days. Pilgrims from all over the world are called together, and believe that the pilgrimage is a chance to cleanse their souls from sin. To gain forgiveness, believers travel as pilgrims to Rome, go to one of the major basilicas and cross through their holy gates; but the pilgrimage alone - according to the Catholic Church - is not enough: the faithful must also confess, take communion, pray, and perform an act of pity, mercy or penance. At the end of the Jubilee the Holy gate will be closed until the next jubilee.

What the Catholic Church is celebrating in recent months, however, is not an event like the others. It is a special Jubilee ‘of Mercy’. It was Pope Francis himself who wanted it, and announced it during a mass.

12 FROM ITALY

The world is going through a wrenching series of wars, clashes of civilizations, and cultures. In this context, what could be more appropriate than the gathering of pious souls ready to clear themselves of sin and form a common front.

The Church has called together the faithful, regrouping the ranks of Christianity (more than 10 million pilgrims are estimated present in Rome) just when the threat of violence has become more present, and just a few days away from the shock of the Paris shootings.

Before crossing the sacred doors, which takes just four seconds, the pilgrims are subjected to dozens of searches, metal detectors, cameras trained on their backs, and requests for documents. Not to mention the ever-present fear of a terrorist attack, just a moment before being able to redeem their sins.

The Jubilee of the revolutionary Francesco, has at its center the celebration of the beauty of faith, the search for the sublime, the overcoming of all earthly things to reach a state of true mercy capable of subverting the laws of the world away from more hatred and violence.

This is what St Peter’s successor asks of his followers, "I have decided to hold a special Jubilee that is focused upon the mercy of God", that is, something that disregards man and his limits, and looks to spirituality as an antidote to war and terror.

Meanwhile, Rome is looking beautiful, and welcomes the faithful, the tourists and the curious; everything is being celebrated as planned, despite the fear. Only at the end, when the holy door is walled up again, will we know if the words (and ideas) of the revolutionary Pope have been a warning to human history.

words AGATA GRIMALDI PHOTOS DANIELE CURTO

Scientific research proves

garlic’s natural healing powers

T

he Christmas and New Year period are for most of us, an opportunity to overindulge on food, like Pandoro and Panettone, accompanied by some bubbles, if you are Italian. With the festive season over for another year, the New Year comes with the usual ritual of putting together a list of many promises we make to better ourselves. Shedding some pounds, saving money, drinking less coffee and alcohol, exercising more, and reading more are the usual suspects.

cells may die and not get replaced quickly enough, the blood flow to the brain may drop, free radicals may damage our neurons and cause inflammation to our brain.

However, what about focussing on upgrading our most valuable asset, our brain?

Studies on rodents that evaluated the effects of ‘junk food’, characterized by high contents of saturated fat and sucrose, have shown a decline in cognitive performance after only three weeks of dietary treatment.

An article published in “The American Society for Nutritional Science” noted that a compound derived from garlic, called diallyl sulfide, can play a strong part against neurodegenerative and inflammatory agents we are exposed to as we age. Garlic, according to a study conducted by Haider et al. in 2008, can enhance cognitive functions. The mechanics are explained by a boost of the serotonin concentration in the brain with administration of garlic extract. High level of this neurotransmitter in the brain is generally speaking associated with better memory, mood and learning abilities.

On top of been slower in comprehension, response and perception, the rodents were also fatter. What we eat has consequences on our belt as well as on our brain. In fact, some particular micronutrients are crucial for the molecular processes in our body, including our brain and its cognitive functions such as problem solving, attention and memory, speech and language.

If you like garlic like myself, there is good news for you and your brain. Micronutrients in garlic can not only protect your brain against midlife cardiovascular risk factors such as high cholesterol, hypertension, which are also linked to brain decline, but they can also improve your memory. As we age, our cognitive abilities may decline. There are a lot of reasons for why this could happen: our brain

Nonetheless, while modern research is confirming the medicinal value of garlic (which herbalists have known for thousands of years), we won’t hear much about it from the pharmaceutical companies for the simple reasons that garlic cannot be patented and exploited as such. They will rather use diallyl sulfide as the ‘active ingredient’ and derive a drug from it. Yet it will not be nearly as effective as raw garlic which contains hundreds of minerals and nutrients. It is very likely that garlic's healing power comes from

all these ingredients working together. And if any particular ingredient is found more potent than the others, and that ingredient is isolated and made into a medicine, it will probably have negative side effects like virtually every other drug in use today. As always, the best source of nutrition and health comes from food itself.

“

“Modern research is confirming the medicinal value of garlic (which herbalists have known for thousands of years), but we won’t hear much about it from the pharmaceutical companies for the simple reasons that garlic cannot be patented and exploited as such” Agata Grimaldi

Source : www.physci.ucla.edu/research/GomezPinilla Haider S, Naz N, Khaliq S, Perveen T, Haleem DJ, “Repeated administration of fresh garlic increases memory retention in rats”. J Med Food 2008 .

FOOD&WINE 13

Recipe ALESSANDRA D’ANGELO PHOTOS DANIELE CURTO

MOLLICA ATTURRATA

Sicilian rendition of Spaghetti aglio, olio e peperoncino

This is the quintessential of Italian easy cooking pasta, so you can get home after a long day or a late night with friends, ready in a moment, the traditional spaghettata delights every palate (vegan, dairy free, hallal, and kosher).

Like all recipes made from a handful of simple ingredients, the quality of the products and the know-how - Regola D’Arte - make the difference between a delicious dish and an oily bland bowl of pasta.

INGREDIENTS: Serves 4 Sea salt 400g durum wheat spaghetti (best if extruded through bronze) 4 cloves fresh garlic (Purple stripes will give you best result) 300ml extra-virgin olive oil 4 small red hot chillies 4 tablespoons fresh flat-leaf parsley chopped 2 cups of breadcrumbs (good bread makes good crumbs) Bring a large pot of cold water to boil over high heat, then salt it generously. Peel and cut cloves of garlic lengthwise, remove the shoots and slice them thinly.

Cut the chillies lengthwise, deseed and slice.

Place the breadcrumbs in a small frying pan with a spoon of olive oil and warm over low heat, stirring often until it turns a nut-brown colour, then remove from the heat.

When the water is boiling, add the pasta and cook, stirring occasionally, until al dente (about 8 minutes). It needs to be tender but not mushy.

While the pasta cooks, combine the garlic,

olive oil and chilli in a large skillet and warm over low heat, stirring occasionally. When the garlic softens and turns light golden, (about 6 minutes) add ½ cup of hot pasta water to stop the garlic from cooking any further and add the parsley Sautee on the low heat while you drain the pasta, then add the pasta to the sauce and return to medium heat. Cook, tossing gently, for 30 seconds or until the water and oil are emulsified.

Top with toasted breadcrumbs and a sprinkle of parsley, serve immediately.

Buon APPETITO! 201 Queens parade Clifton Hill, Melbourne VIC 3068 maccaroniosteria.com.au

14 FOOD&WINE

WORDS IVANO ERCOLE

The “fair go” spirit of a young Italian who created a dynamic community organization in Western Australia

C

arlo Guaia, a third year Bachelor of Arts student at the University of Western Australia, is a staunch believer in the “fair go” spirit of Australia. For a growing number of people such spirit is long dead and gone but not for him who has put it into practice through a community organization he founded late last year, with the aim of bringing Italian and Australian scholars, professionals and students together.

The organization is called "Italian Scientists & Professionals Community in Western Australia (ISPC-WA)" and operates as a channel of communication and socialization for Italian and Australian scientists and professionals who want to exchange ideas and cooperate in fostering the economy, scientific research and cultural life in Western Australia.

The initiative sprang from Carlo's experience as Vice President of the University of Western Australia (UWA) Italian Club in 2014 and 2015. He realised that the Italian community lacked a network that could link researchers with the private sector, even though there were a lot of Italians with great ideas and creative projects. He came into contact with a few other members of the Italian community who shared his aspirations and they started meeting up and helping each other out, a process that soon grew into ISPC-WA. November saw the official launch of the ISPC-WA, an event that Carlo describes as most encouraging. “We gained a lot of exposure across the WA Italian community which is important because research and innovation needs to be owned by the entire community. The people who were present at the launch were really inspired by the energy of our young Italian scholars & professionals”.

Raffaele Ragni, Geotechnical Engineer.

ISPC-WA is now well established and running regular events. The most recent one was a Christmas Networking Aperitif which was attended by 75 people who filled the “Davvero - Caffe' e Cucina” premises. “Most initiatives – says Carlo - are hitting those numbers or more and we never thought we would achieve this so quickly!”

ISPC-WA has close to 400 members, many of whom are young Italians who are distinguishing themselves in their respective field of enterprise.

One of them is Raffaele Ragni, a 28-year old geotechnical engineer on his third year of a PhD at the UWA Centre for Offshore Foundation Systems. His research is focused on the installation of foundations for mobile drilling platforms, employed in the oil and gas industry across the globe.

Carlo Guaia, Founder of ISPC-WA.

Another is Federica Marchesini, a young woman who used to be a teacher of English and Spanish in Italy and started her new life in Australia five years ago working in the hospitality industry. Federica is today a successful professional who runs a digital marketing company called MJ Social (www.mjsocial.com.au). Two amongst many examples of highly talented people who have joined ISPC-WA. For further information Carlo Guaia can be contacted via email at: carlo.guaia@gmail.com

“

Federica Marchesini, Founder of MJ Social.

“Research and innovation needs to be owned by the entire community” Carlo Guaia

15

WORDS Nelli Altson photos PACO MATTEO LI CALZI

The many degrees of trials behind the success of the man

who created the acclaimed pizzerias called

“Gradi”

T

here’s been a lot of hype about him, but Johnny Di Francesco’s is not a rags to riches story. Rather, it is a straightforward ‘work hard and make your own luck’ type of tale. According to him, achieving your goals depends on working hard and smart, consistently and persistently. Johnny’s level of success is something special, though. Call it missed opportunities or poor luck, whatever the case, true success stories are few these days, and self-made success stories of national and international fame? Even rarer.

Today I met Di Francesco, the owner of three of Melbourne’s most smashing pizzerias: 400 Gradi in Brunswick, Gradi at Crown and Gradi at Essendon. It was soon clear that I was talking to someone who had found his passion and worked hard for years driving that passion into a fulfilling career and attaining a solid sense of self in this bewildering world.

Johnny delved into Melbourne’s hospitality industry in his late teens, blundering into various restaurant ventures, which saw their share of sweat and tears. He had to sell his early pizzeria’s because he underestimated the business side of the venture, and it took a while to realise that it would take more than just great pizza to make a restaurant successful. “I have learnt more from my failures than I have from anything I have succeeded in”, says Johnny. He describes his path to success as eliminating his mistakes at each stage. He has become a fastidious student of the hospitality industry and has learnt what makes a business profitable.

Now in his 23rd year in the food and hospitality industry, Johnny has come a long way from his humble beginnings. In 2014, his pizza margherita was awarded first place in the prestigious Campionato

16 FOOD&WINE

Johnny Di Francesco.

Pizzeria, Gradi at Crown. Photo by Daniele Curto.

Bar, Gradi at Crown. Photo by Daniele Curto.

FOOD&WINE 17

Mondiale della Pizza (Pizza World Championship), in Parma, Italy.

Johnny was catapulted onto the world stage as ‘The Australian Pizzaiolo’. The exposure had an immediate positive impact on his business.

Gradi expanded to two new locations: Crown Casino in South Bank and Essendon. He wrote a cookbook: “World’s Best Pizza”. Furthermore, Johnny took part in several key overseas events such as the Milan Expo, Parizza in France and New Zealand Fine Foods, running pizza competitions and mentoring pizza chefs in the craft of traditional Neapolitan pizza.

Australia’s top pizzaiolo is currently mentoring aspiring chefs, and, to some extent, educating diners to focus on quality food, encouraging them to make it and to demand it. “Australians are traveling all the time, and chefs here have to work harder to produce high quality dishes like in Europe”, he says. There may always be five-dollar pizza places, but it is his hope that the food industry in Australia will one day place greater value in a quality-driven market instead of one that is price-driven.

After last year’s victory, Johnny shows no signs of slowing down.

He also professes that memories of difficult days in his early career are powerful reminders that he is still in the driver’s seat and focus is paramount. “Despite what others think, my career hasn’t always been rosy. I still remember the first ten years of very hard times in my business.

I never want to go back there. So I want to continue to work hard to make sure that I continue this success going forward”, he admits. Johnny is in his element. He is working off the momentum built from his recent achievements, and is determined to keep moving forward.

What has success meant for his family and personal life? It has enabled him the means to provide his family with the opportunity to explore their own interests. “I want my three children to take their own paths. I will support it. For instance, my daughter, she loves music- I tell her, ‘if you love it then do it.’ My son, he loves his soccer. A league in Italy has picked him up. It is about living your dream and seeing where it takes you. In addition, if you put one hundred per cent in what you want to do, you really strive, and you really believe that that is what you want- then it will happen. I say that to my son”, Johnny says.

As for how he feels about his family living abroad, Johnny concedes, “It has its effects. Any spare time, I try to spend time with them as much as possible. I look at it as a life experience for all three of my children. They get to experience a different culture and live a different life. They get to embrace my wife’s heritage and mine - the Italian background in us. I think it is beautiful that my children can say that they lived in Italy for a while”.

Alas, Johnny ponders the question: how do you balance career, family and personal life? “I probably haven’t achieved that, and that’s possibly my next goal. We’ll probably get there one day, but it’s going to take time”, he says candidly, examining his personal life and acknowledging that there is room for improvement. He’s achieved the balance of flavours between mozzarella, tomato, and basil, on his pizza Margherita, the balance between book-keeping and gastronomy in his business.

It is not hard to imagine the goal-oriented restaurateur achieving the perfect balance in life’s trifecta.

18 FOOD&WINE

words JOHNNY DI FRANCESCO

Gradi at Crown. Photo by Daniele Curto.

HANDS on FIRE T

he hospitality industry in Melbourne is one of the most diverse and vibrant in the country, if not the world. Food and hospitality in this city are multi-faceted and continues to evolve, surprise and inspire. It is a privilege to be part of it, as I have been for many years, and that is the reason for this column.

I am regularly asked how I got into the industry, what has kept my passion alive, and where I find the inspiration to continue to grow and evolve the Gradi Group along with the industry. This column provides an outlet for me to share the answers and provide advice to those seeking to join this great industry.

Failing that, I can at least share some amusing anecdotes and some notes on what not to do!

I entered the industry as a youngster, knowing nothing about food, hospitality, or running a business. I made the leap into working for myself without a true understanding of the industry and I learned the hard way that it takes more than just passion to make a business profitable. Along the way however, I learned more about the industry than I thought possible and each failure lead me to a greater success and taught me valuable lessons.

My path into the industry and the life of a Pizza Chef is not a traditional story. I am not from a long line of pizzaiolos, carrying on the family tradition of pizza making. I was not born into a family of pizza makers, nor was I encouraged to enter the world of food in an attempt to learn more about my culture. But yet my passion for the craft was there from a very young age, and once the flour was on my hands, pizza was in my blood. To this day, nothing makes me happier than bringing the traditional cooking methods of Napoli to my modern day customers.

I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have received the training that I have, and to have worked with the best in the business both as colleagues and as friends. This ongoing support and my desire to continue learning is what has made it possible to be able to continue the expansion of the Gradi Group to encompass not only new restaurants, but also new aspects of my culture including a cicchetti bar and a gelateria. I don’t ever want to stop learning, to stop growing, or to stop appreciating both of my cultures.

Whilst I don’t profess to know everything, I have learned a LOT about the industry – all aspects of it – and I am happy to share my experiences, my advice, and even my mistakes to help and inspire others.

This is an opportunity for me to answer these questions, and others that you have - about me and my story, and regarding the industry itself.

Send your questions to Johnny at: johnnydifrancesco@segmento.com.au

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President of the Italian Republic Sergio Mattarella.

WORDS Imma Elenoire Laudieri Di Biase (our correspondent in Italy)

Getting to know the new president of the Italian Republic

Sergio Mattarella B

efore his election just over a year ago, the new president of the Republic of Italy, Sergio Mattarella, was mostly known by ordinary Italians for an oddity associated to his surname.

A quiet, reserved man, he had been a member of Parliament for 25 years (1983-2008), had served three times as a government minister and once as vice-premier before becoming a judge of the Constitutional Court, the highest Italian judiciary institution. In 1980, a tragic circumstance had thrusted him fleetingly into the limelight when Italian newspapers published a photo of him holding the body of his brother Piersanti who had been shot dead by the mafia outside his home in Palermo.

Yet, when he was elected president, most people knew him because an electoral law he had designed had been polemically nicknamed as Mattarellum. Italian electoral laws are difficult to be understood by common people and Mattarella’s was no exception. In order to emphasize its intricacies, a sarcastic political commentator called it by translating the surname of its creator into Latin. That happened over twenty years ago and until last year Sergio Mattarella had mostly been known for this gibe on one of this deeds as a politician.

After his election, the Italian media rushed to fill the gap by researching and publishing the story of his public and private life, but while his political and institutional careers were easily accessible, there was little that could be said about his personal profile, apart from the tragic episode of his brother being killed by the mafia as, in his capacity as governor of the Sicilian regional district, was trying to remove, or at least reduce, the influence of organised crime in Sicily.

So newspapers and television channels concentrated on Mattarella’s public life and the picture that emerged from their scrutinies was that of a man of high integrity with a steadfast adherence to a strict moral and ethical code, a rare quality for a politician not just in Italy but everywhere.

His Christian Democratic party that his father, Bernardo, helped setting up after WW2, collapsed in the early 1990s. Many of his fellow party men disappeared from the political scene and quite a few were arrested on charges of corruption but Mattarella was unscathed. He had resigned as education minister in 1990 to protest legislation that helped Berlusconi transform what started out as several local channels into a business empire including Italy's three main private TV networks.

After entering politics in 1983, Mattarella has lead what most of his colleagues consider a Spartan life, moving between his homes in Rome and Palermo and spending little time mixing socially. He left residence on the day of his election, in a small Fiat Panda.

Those who know him often refer to him as a pensive man, susceptible to bouts of sadness, particularly after his wife Marisa, who was the sister of the widow of his brother Piersanti, died in 2012.

He has three children called Bernardo Giorgio, Laura and Francesca, six grandchildren, and is considered a father-figure by the two children of his ill-fated brother. One of them is active in local politics in Sicily with the PD, the party that is currently governing Italy under the reformist drive of prime minister Matteo Renzi.

Since the death of his wife, Mattarella had been living a simple life in the austere, one-bedroom lodgings of Rome’s Constitutional Court. Now he lives at the Quirinale, the huge 1,200-room Roman palace which was home to 30 popes, four kings, and since the 1940s has been the official residence of Italy's presidents.

Just over a month after his election, Mattarella announced that the palace would open every day to the public. Announcing his decision, he said that the palace was a "symbol of the culture and history of all Italians." A few days earlier he had hopped on board an Alitalia flight to visit his home city of Palermo - the first time in years that a head of state has shunned the presidential plane.

In his first televised end-of-the-year message, he didn’t choose to appear in the presidential studio, nor at his desk, nor surrounded by some precious tapestry. He showed himself sitting on an armchair in a living room next to a fireplace. A location as homey as it is possible inside the Quirinale.

He wanted to connect with the people and he avoided any reference to politics or political parties. His interlocutors were “my fellow citizens”, as he addressed them, calling them the same way he had done last February, after his election.

He spoke frankly, as a person who can see people’s qualities and flaws, their bright and dark sides, like their ingenuity and creativity, but also their notorious individualism and lacking of civic sense.

And if there was a main theme in this speech, it was without a doubt individual responsibility, in every sector.

He concluded by paying homage to three Italian women: a top physicist, an astronaut and a mentally disable sports champion.

For the first time ever, a president in a formal speech has put women ahead of men as examples of what can be achieved with commitment and courage to one’s life undertaking.

The Italian presidency is a largely ceremonial office but it can play a crucial role in shaping Italy’s future. Mattarella’s qualities of institutional equilibrium, his stately traits and his moral stature will prove invaluable in forthcoming months as Renzi seeks to pass reforms aimed at the country’s full economic and social recovery.

FROM ITALY 21

WORDS Deirdre Mackenna (Director of “Cultural Documents”)

Connecting the present with the forgotten past

1

An Italian filmmaker has brought back to life the stories of migrants from Molise through a series of photos shot sixty years ago

H

ow many of us have ancestry from more than one country? Most. Maybe all. How many of us know the stories of why these ancestors took the decision to travel, and how they fared during their travels? Few. Possibly none of us. Learning our own histories is time-consuming. It needs a certain talent. And anyway, how can we know our past when our ancestors didn’t pass the stories on to us? But do we just throw up our hands in defeat, or is there something more important to hold onto?

Filmmaker Agapito Di Pilla has taken it upon himself to follow the journeys and stories of three generations of people who started to travel from one small village in the 1950s, some of them setting up home in Australia and others in Canada, Argentina and the UK. Their story starts with Frank Monaco, born in 1917 in the USA, his parents had travelled there from the village of Cantalupo nel Sannio in Molise in deepest central Italy. Like so many first generation children Monaco grew up in a household that might as well have been transported directly from Italy, such was the nature of the food, faith, language and custom that he lived everyday. Monaco seized the chance to visit his ancestral village when he found himself posted to central Italy in WWII – setting out from Rome to make a journey into the unknown rural lands of Molise.

It took Monaco moments to decide to return as soon as he was decommissioned from the Army.

During his visits over the next few years he developed close relationships with family and friends, and gradually, built up an extraordinary body of photographic images, capturing a pivotal moment of change between the old way of life and its metamorphosis to our today of automation, communication and consumption. What distinguished Monaco’s works even more, was that almost all his subjects were female, a consequence of the loss of life during WWII and the need for men to migrate to find gainful employment resulting in entire communities populated only by women and children.

Agapito Di Pilla felt that he had tapped a vital seam between the past and the present when he discovered Monaco’s works: he immediately curated an exhibition in the town of Machiagodena near Cantalupo, positioning the works of Monaco alongside Mario Giacomelli’s iconic images in order to raise awareness that the modest, everyday life of rural Molise in fact held an illustrious position in the important canon of photography in Italy.

22 REGULARS

But when visitors came to the exhibition, something unexpected happened: Agapito Di Pilla found himself watching the visitors become awestruck as, one by one, they started to piece together the names and stories of the people whose lives had become captured in time, sixty years previously in the images of Frank Monaco. Agapito undertook to close the historical gap by tracking down the people in the photographs sixty years later, and in his film ‘Women of Molise’ we see their reactions as their memories from the past are reactivated by Monaco’s images.

Agapito has been commissioned by the art-agency ‘Cultural Documents’ to make a new film entitled ‘Children of Molise’ which follows the story of the images across three continents. Like all powerful photography, Monaco’s images engage us in a compelling process of recognition and reactivation of memory. And Agapito’s films capture the moment of recognition when memory is transposed onto image and both become activated into the present day. This gives us a tool with which we can reflect upon the human vitality that is stimulated when we re-connect with our past.

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Di Pilla and I will be working throughout 2016 to trace the stories of Monaco’s images and will be screening ‘Children of Molise’ at a cinema near you later this year.

In his first journey to Australia in autumn 2015, Agapito Di Pilla began to follow up contacts which led to Perth, where he knew people had emigrated to from Caporio in Molise, and soon he found the children in Monaco’s photographs from the 1950s: Gennarino Della Posta, transformed from a little baby to a successful business man on the other side of the world; Angelo Palermo, now photographed in the colossal surroundings of Perth’s new stadium; Palma Paoliello and Giovanna Giancola together again after sixty years.

Di Pilla once again captured their images through his technique of mixing documentary and arresting images with poetic narrative. Reflecting upon this transposed community, Di Pilla returned to Perth in December to meet up with the third-generation, all descended from the people photographed by Monaco who Di Pilla had filmed for ‘Women of Molise’. This time, Di Pilla wanted to show how inherited culture is continued and expressed during and after integration into a new cultural situation; following the daily routines of two young couples he takes us forward into a new docu-fiction to explore the aims, ideas and ambitions of the next generation.

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WORDS GERARDO PAPALIA

Pasolini’s poem, “The Weeping Excavator”,

Captions 1. 'Molise 41’ by Frank Monaco c.1955.

Frank Monaco, image from the series 'Women of Molise'.

1955. © Oliver Morse 2. ‘Children Spiaggia’ by Agapito Di Pilla. Work in progress for his film 'Children of Molise'.

2015. © Agapito Di Pilla 3. ‘Molise 19’ by Frank Monaco c.1955.

Frank Monaco, image from the series 'Women of Molise'.

1955. © Oliver Morse 4. ‘Gennarino 1’ by Agapito Di Pilla. Work in progress for his film 'Children of Molise'.

2015. © Agapito Di Pilla 5. 'Molise 16’ by Frank Monaco c.1955.

Frank Monaco, image from the series 'Women of Molise'.

1955. © Oliver Morse 6. ‘Angelo palermo 1’ by Agapito Di Pilla. Work in progress for his film 'Children of Molise'.

2015. © Agapito Di Pilla 7. 'Molise 46’ by Frank Monaco c.1955.

Frank Monaco, image from the series 'Women of Molise'.

1955. © Oliver Morse [in Molise 46, giovanna giancola is the young girl (third from the right).]

8. ‘Giovanna 1’ by Agapito Di Pilla. Work in progress for his film 'Children of Molise'.

2015. © Agapito Di Pilla

still stands as a symbol of destructiveness in today’s society ruled by money and greed

T

hose, in the English-speaking world, who have heard of Pier Paolo Pasolini, are most likely to know of him as a director of controversial films.

However, Pasolini, who was born in Bologna in 1922 and murdered in the outskirts of Rome in 1975, started his creative life as a writer of poetry and prose. His work often reflected his struggle to reconcile his contradictions: he was gay and maintained his faithfulness to Catholic values, and for much of his life he also adhered to Marxism. An enduring leitmotif of Pasolini's art is his lament for the destruction of the traditional values (enshrined in the proletarian and peasant Italy of his childhood) by the tide of post-war capitalism and the consumerism brought in its wake (which he considered an “anthropological genocide”).

One of his best-known poetry collections, Le ceneri di Gramsci (Gramsci's Ashes), published in 1957, reflects his experiences during the difficult years of his early adulthood. He lived a hand to mouth existence in a borgata (outer slum) of Rome, on the border, as it were, between the old village-centred peasant Italy and the new Italy represented by the encroaching city limits with its silent peripheries entombed within indifferent concrete walls.

This collection contains a long poem titled Il pianto della scavatrice (The Weeping Excavator) whose themes are somewhat reminiscent of T.S. Eliot's poem “The Wasteland”. In Pasolini's poem the excavator screeches a lament as it bulldozes the old world. Though a symbol of relentless change, the excavator itself weeps over the mortal wounds that is inflicting, as if aware of the suffering that this change will inevitably bring.

Concerned now with our destruction of the environment and global warming we are finally becoming cognisant of the wounds that Pasolini so presciently decried before his tragic demise. Were he alive today, he would continue to denounce, as was his wont, the contradictions of our collective soul.

The other day I saw a silent bulldozer that had just torn down what I knew to have been a perfectly good and well-maintained house. With its inert blade turned downwards, it appeared to be weeping over the destruction it had wrought.

www.womenofmolise. com/directors-notes www.culturaldocuments. net/story/childrenofmolise

I looked at the splintered beams and the contorted metal sheeting that had once sheltered and warmed an entire family. I began to wonder what this house had once represented. I was not only thinking of the human labour, the sacrifices and the capital needed to build it.

For me the house also embedded the human experiences accumulated over the course of its history etched in the memories of its inhabitants and into the house’s every fibre. This house represented a ‘sacrifice’ in this

word’s original meaning of ‘to make sacred’. It is the human investment in any object that makes it ‘sacred’.

Human labour is also part of nature because we belong to the natural world. When we destroy human artefacts, we are also destroying, along with natural resources, the human effort invested into making them.

With dark foreboding I began to meditate on whether this mechanism of destruction by people is also applied to people themselves. I have seen many people cast aside as soon as they failed to keep up with machines or working practice.

Apparently, in today’s capitalist economy we must continue to destroy in order to turn a profit by ‘rebuilding’ or replacing. It is but a slower version of what happens in war.

This process reduces anything with human or natural value to a simple monetary equation. Human labour, skills and culture, natural resources, are all subject to quantification in the form of money. Is this not in reality an extreme form of impoverishment, a reductio ad pecuniam that makes a mockery of everything that is human and worth living for? For if time is money, money is not time, nor is it true wealth.

Perhaps one of the reasons for this distortion of human society lies in the fact that European culture has historically practised a distinction between matter and spirit. We are taught that we can freely deal with the former without tainting the latter. We consider nature not as a system of sentient beings but as inert matter from which we can take as we please. We refuse to see being in animals or in vegetation. We reduce both to the status of raw materials for our factories. Our slaughtering of food animals, for instance, bears none of the respect and consideration accorded to the animals in traditional societies in recognition of their imminent sacrifice. It is simply machine killing, akin to contemporary warfare. We treat nature, including the nature that abides in humans, as materials from which to draw a profit. Consequently, we all become interchangeable and disposable G.I.s or General Issue mass-produced products of a system.

If instead we contest this separation between matter and spirit and begin to see the one as emanating from the other as part of an inseparable whole, then we begin to realise that we are actually living in a charnel house.

We begin to understand the indigenous people who have always been acutely aware that to destroy nature and human effort is to destroy ourselves. By abandoning ‘sacrifice’, the ‘making sacred’ that derives from our respect for what we make and do, we reduce human effort to valueless dust.

REGULARS 23

WORDS LAURA D’ANGELO PHOTOS PAOLO BENINI

LOLA LOVELY GIFTS

T

he Clash, arguably one of the best rock bands ever, released their hit “Should I stay or should I go” in 1982. To go or to stay. Andare or Restare.

The question is reminiscent of Hamlet’s existential ponderings, and continues to arise for thousands of Italian youngsters as they attempt to escape Italy’s current deteriorating economic situation. A couple of years ago I asked myself that same question, singing that song like a daily refrain.

Today, here I am in Melbourne, happy, curious and young enough to start my life afresh (again and again).

While in your twenties, moving abroad is an exciting adventure and an opportunity to learn about life, the choice seems harder when it involves the whole family.

I asked the Maranzan’s, a family of four, to share their experience moving from Vicenza to Melbourne, and explain to us their courageous choice.

“When we relocated to Melbourne, My husband Loris and I were both in our forties, while our kids were 6 and 8”, Grazia reveals. “It’s not easy at all to leave your certainties behind to start over in a new country, of course it’s a lot easier for a young single person with no family”.

Back in Italy, both Grazia and Loris were both employed in the jewellery industry, an area that is now facing a tough historical downturn. This was one of the reasons that convinced Grazia and Loris to pack their suitcases: they wanted to give their kids a better future.

I ask Grazia about the children’s experience of immigration. Was it a challenge?

“The first months were critical”, she says. “My kids didn’t know a word of English and that presents problems with socialisation. We enrolled them in an English school for migrants and after 6 months things improved with their ability to speak. Now they’ve got such an Aussie accent that you would never know they are Italian!”

During our chat, Grazia also tells me that her husband was born in Canada.

A traveller from birth, he’s well experienced in the pros and cons of immigration.

“Loris moved to Italy from Toronto at the age of 10, pretty much like our kids. He really knew what to expect but also that we would all be fine eventually. Relocating seems like a huge mountain to climb, so just take one step at a time and don’t overthink. In a family, everyone needs to support each other to overcome difficulties.”

Many challenges were faced and today Grazia is very proud of her family and their ability to integrate into a totally different lifestyle. “When my friends overseas ask me if things here are the same as Italy, I always answer that they’re exactly the opposite, and I’m not just talking about driving on the left!”

After settling down in Australia in 2012, the Maranzan’s opened “Lola Lovely Gifts”, a shop in Thornbury, home to a wide range of items like jewellery, bags, scarfs and more, by some of Italy’s and Australia’s best designers.

“In Italy I had been a sales manager for ten years. I enjoyed every minute of it; I am passionate about customer service. In Melbourne we first started as whole-

24 FASHION

Cashmere knitwear and accessories by Lola Lovely Gifts.

Paolo Benini Photography p@paolo-photo.com.au www.paolo-photo.com.au

FASHION 25

salers. Lola Lovely Gifts is just the natural evolution of our commercial strategies: we know what to import and where to place it in the market.”

About the choice to sell Italian design, which is largely appreciated in Australia, Grazia says: “We try hard to find a reasonable price-quality compromise when we’re looking for new products to bring here. We also like the idea of helping all those Italian brands that have a remarkable history, amazing products and an enormous potential but are struggling due to the economic crisis that has hit the country in the last few years.”

Grazia Cavallin, Founder of “Lola Lovely Gift” in her shop in Thornbury.

Paolo Benini Photography p@paolo-photo.com.au www.paolo-photo.com.au

Grazia has also created a personal brand called “LOLA”.

“It started as a hobby. I was playing around with some beads and pieces, just because I have this passion for jewellery and then, people really liked my work so I refined my skills to make a collection in silver and natural stones. Some of my customers also ask me to fix and ‘give new life’ to some old dusty necklaces. You should see their surprise and the satisfaction at the end of the job! That really makes my day!”

So, what is Loris’ role in the shop?

Earrings, necklaces and bracelets - “Lola Lovely Gifts”.

Paolo Benini Photography

p@paolo-photo.com.au www.paolo-photo.com.au

“Basically I’m the Queen of the shop”, says Grazia “while Loris is the Lord of the warehouse and book-keeping. We compliment each other and I am really happy, he’s fine and our marriage is safe!”

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words Bronte Dee Jackson

CULTURE BITES

W

hat is it about Italians and food?

Italians are the only culture I know whose conversation during a meal, is about what their next meal will be. I once worked with a team of people who would begin every day with a conversation about what they had for dinner the night before and how they had cooked it. In detail. Shortly after I moved into my apartment in Rome I came across a group of my neighbours gathered at the entrance to my building, having what looked like a heated argument. As I got closer and could hear them, I realised that they were disagreeing about the best way to prepare mozzarella in carrozza, a fried cheese sandwich.

When I lived in Italy, I discovered that if I wanted to get a group of people to talk to me about their work issues, I first had to eat with them, or talk about food with them. Once we had established that food was as important to me as it was to them, that I would take time to eat, share and digest it with them, then they could relate to me, then they could trust me, and other things could be shared and digested.

In contrast, when my Italian husband started his job in Melbourne, he missed out on having lunch the first few days.

“Why aren’t you having lunch?”, I enquired.

“I can’t work out when it’s lunchtime. No one leaves their desk to eat”.

When I first arrived in Italy, I remember proudly explaining to my new Roman friends how I could eat food from a different nationality every night for a month if I wanted to, in my hometown of Melbourne. They were unimpressed.

“That’s because you’ve only been a country for 200 years. It’s not long enough to have your own cuisine”, I was told.

I remember thinking it was odd that nearly every restaurant in Rome had a similar menu, the same few dishes that only changed when the seasons changed. How could seasons dictate food I wondered, when you can get produce all year round, picked before its ripened and driven down from Queensland in a refrigerated truck, or from the frozen section in your supermarket? Then I tasted a sun ripened tomato from a local market.

A long time later, after living for 17 years in Rome, I was no longer impressed by or chasing the latest trend in food. I was looking forward to eating what I knew would be on the menu, what had been perfected over decades (sometimes centuries) by the one family,

based on local and seasonal ingredients, and what could be relied on as being better than anything I could get at home. A big challenge given that most home chefs have been perfecting similar recipes for decades too.

I learnt also that Italians do believe in ‘food miles’ but instead of expecting the food to travel to them, they travel to it. My Italian friends would think nothing of driving for two hours to get to a restaurant they particularly wanted to sample, or driving forty minutes out of their way on the way home to pick up a particular type of cheese, or when they wanted more variety driving to a another town to sample their version of Amatriciana, a type of pasta sauce made from tomatoes, pork and a hint of chilli.

Every culture loves its own food, no doubt about it, but Italians have a special relationship with their food. And they have inspired us as Australians to not only have a relationship with their food but a better one with our own food. Viva Italia!

Bronte is a Social Anthropologist, and author of “Roman Daze – La Dolce Vita for all seasons” (Melbourne Books).

Currently living in Melbourne she spent 17 years living and working in Rome with the United Nations.

REGULARS 27

WORDS laura d’angelo PHOTOS Andres Lozano

Tommaso Spinzi in his home.

The art of turning

living spaces

special unique

into something and 28 DESIGN

A

natural talent for defining new and old spaces, Tommaso Spinzi is an Italian-born interior designer and owner of Melbourne-based company Spinzi Design.

After ending his academic career with a Diploma in Surveying, Tommaso worked in the construction industry before moving to Lugano, Switzerland, to collaborate with a prestigious architect studio. In this environment, thanks to the daily use of drawing programs in 3D, he discovered his passion for interior design, a profession that in Italy is mostly practiced by architects.

Being an architect, though, wasn't Tommaso's dream. As a matter of fact, he believes that “architecture itself involves too much bureaucracy and is limited by too many safety laws.” He decided therefore to quit his training in that area to focus on interior design, a field that he strongly associates with the concepts of the art of living and lifestyle.

Working with design gives vent to the creativity that Tommaso has shown since he was a child.

“When I was only five”, he recalls, “I used to paint my room in different colours and give every object a personal touch”, a clear sign of what he would do as an adult.

In 2011 Tommaso moved to Melbourne to learn English, a time that he considers a defining moment in his life. While he intended to stay for three months, his curiosity got the better of him and he eventually extended his visit. He travelled around Australia before coming back to Melbourne to study interior design, completing the two-year course in just six months!

Just as his visa was about to expire, Tommaso had a clear idea about his future. Instead of returning to cold and snowy Switzerland, in 2014 he finally invested in his expertise by opening a professional studio, Spinzi Design.

Apart from creating functional and beautiful interior environments, Tommaso is eager to give each customer the experience of turning ordinary spaces into extraordinary ones, each of them unique and timeless. His consultations are customised and intended to marry individual client’s needs and tastes with his design aims. His work expresses the personality of each individual client and, above all, his/her lifestyle. It follows that the creative process is shared on the spot with his clients, a personal touch that is a vital ingredient of his winning formula.

“Our home is the place where we spend most of our time, which is why we must feel comfortable and pleased in it. It's the mirror of our lifestyle, a

way of living that sums up our life’s needs and motivations”, he explains.

Working as interior designer requires a large, global knowledge of styles, furniture and the art world with the distinctive mark of the designer’s own flair. Tommaso Spinzi's design doesn’t disappoint. It is a contemporary cocktail of mixed ingredients: sophistication and surprise created by the combination of old and new elements, attention to detail, cultural heterogeneity, and timelessness.

When asked about his plans for the future, Tommaso hints that Australia is just the beginning for Spinzi Designs. His dream is to express his talent all over the world. It seems an extreme ambition but judging from his swift achievements in this country, he may well be able to accomplish it.

“

“When I was only five I used to paint my room in different colours and give every object a personal touch” Tommaso Spinzi

From the 11th to the 17th of April Tommaso will be leading a design tour of Milan, focusing on the highlights of the Salone Mobile furniture exhibition as well as many hidden design gems around Milan.

This small selected group will experience the modern design highlights of Milan, including exclusive boutiques, design galleries, hubs, and architecture as well as unrivalled gastronomical experiences.

For further information about this, please contact Tommaso through his website www.spinzi.com

DESIGN 29

words Marco Maria Cerbo (Consul General of Italy)

ROOTS&ROUTES

Mario Bellini, Sofà from the Bambole series. 1972 B&B It

The glorious past and exciting future of an artistry known as the

Italian Design

I

taly has been the cradle of modern and contemporary design since the beginning of the 20th Century. In the years preceding and immediately after WWI, our industrial design distinguished itself by its focus on replicating intricate details. In those times, the first pieces of furniture design were produced on a mass-scale and the luxury industry made its debut in Rome, Milan and Naples’ shop windows. The first breed of discerning punters was attracted by the fanciful objects put on sale, thanks to their capacity to maintain the national handcrafting traditions.

In fact, Italy’s best designers have drawn deeply from the extremely rich and diverse culture that makes ours the country with the largest artistic heritage in the world. They have absorbed the lessons of a millennia-long history and skilfully and meticulously translated them into everyday objects, exploiting an innate taste.

As a top-end fashion master such as Giorgio Armani once said, “to create something exceptional, your mindset must be relentlessly focused on the smallest detail”.

The successes achieved in the first decades of the last century birthed an industry which flourished for many years and was not entirely disrupted by the catastrophes of WWII. Italian originality became renowned and recognizable mainly in the years of the post-war economic boom, when “made-in-Italy” products flooded markets in Europe and overseas. In the 1950s and 60s industrial objects became a symbol of the new reawakening period Italy was experiencing to the extent that some iconic ones became trademarks of our country.

Bruno Munari, Cube Ashtray. 1957 Danese.

Instrumental to the promotion of Italian design abroad was and still is the “Triennale di Milano”, an international cultural institution which self-defines as “an organiser of exhibitions and conferences as well as a host of arts, design, architecture, fashion, cinema, communications and social events”. The Triennale which is housed in the Palazzo dell'Arte, a beautiful architectural masterpiece that blends rationalist and neo-classical styles, was first launched in 1923 in Monza, on the outskirts of Milan.

The XXI International Exhibition of the Triennale di Milano will be held in 2016 and is appropriately entitled “21st Century. Design After Design”. Ideally drawing upon the legacy of the 29 DESIGN

Gio Ponti, Superleggera Chair. 1957 Cassina.

talia.

Marco Zanuso and Richard Sapper, TS502 Cube Radio. 1957 Brionvega.

Luigi Caccia Dominioni, Catilina Chair. 1958 Azucena.

World Expo that took place in 2015 and attracted over twenty million visitors from all over the world, the XXI Triennale will showcase cutting edge creations, capable to have a long lasting impact on tastes and trends. For five months (April 2nd – September 12th), the Palazzo dell’Arte will host a long list of multidisciplinary events in the arts, entertainment, technology and research, with a key involvement of internationally renowned architects, designers, and top stylists whose ideas will take centre stage. Visitors will be encouraged to play a lead role and participate in performances, as the exhibition will also feature events aimed at study groups, associations and schools.

Gaetano Pesce, UP Series Sofa. 1969 B&B Italia.

The whole program is meant to highlight the ways in which design has acquired a strategic role in the age of globalisation and should be seen as a driving force behind new economies and innovation. In other words, design has become a protagonist in our time. Designers give shape to ideas that enrich everyday experiences, and improve our lives. Designers bring clarity where there is confusion; they promote vitality where there is indifference; they lend a voice where there is silence. Design has been a truly revolutionary force in an otherwise standardized and often-too-homogeneous planet.

Italian design and innovation has excelled in shaping the world and continues to do so. Visiting Milan during the Triennale will immediately bring you into contact with Italian design and drive you through an unforgettable experience. Expect the unexpected and do not lower your standards, as you are sure to be pleasantly surprised.

Ettore Sottrass, Valentine Typewriter. 1968 Olivetti.

DESIGN 31

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words ILARIA GIANFAGNA

TAKE A SEGMENT IN SEGMENTO! Missing Italy but finding Australia the right place to be

ADVERTISE WITH US Contact for this opportunity

marketing@segmento.com.au

F

rom engineer to a restaurant manager of one of the most famous Italian restaurants in Melbourne.

This is the story of Silvio Stellavato, a civil engineer, born 1982 in Cilento and left Italy, almost three years ago with the idea of living abroad and learning English. He always dreamt of Australia, because of its open spaces and the idea of a land so far away from home.

However, he never imagined that Australia would be his new home, working in a very different field from his studies, and taking advantage all the opportunities that Melbourne has to offer to migrants.

Why did you decide to go to Australia?

I come from a family of migrants; hence, immigration for me was a natural path. In addition to that, the challenge in finding a job in Italy, made that choice easy for me, and was enough to guarantee me a financial independence.

What did you do in the past two years in Australia?

You are what you eat.

So, today I am Pizza!

I arrived here in 2013 on a working holiday visa and with a very low level of English. After one week, I found a job as a dishwasher and that was my main occupation for almost one year. Finally, I found another job as manager of one of the best Italian restaurants in Melbourne, where I currently work. Personally, I deal with the administration and human resources aspects. Moreover, sometimes I like working as a bartender. I have to say that this was only possible thanks to my improved level of English and to my attitude of never giving up.

How did you get there?

After the first year on my working holiday visa, I realised that I wanted to stay in Australia at least another year and at the same time improve my English. Working and studying at the same time was difficult, but going back to school was like going back in time. As a result, I easily learnt English and I met a lot of amazing people.

Phone (03) 9840 6975 Address 904 Doncaster Rd, Doncaster East VIC 3109

What do you suggest to the people who want to move to Australia?

Authenticity... it's only the beginning!

In the last 2 years, I realised that this land is full of opportunities, with a great sense of meritocracy, an unknown concept in Italy.

The chances of success depends on your level of English, of your past experience and of course on your economic resources. It is also necessary to have a strong will power, to never give up and be ready to work very hard. With this attitude, the opportunities are endless.

How is your new life in Australia and in general how is life in Australia?

My life is made of sacrifices, but I have a job, that lets me live happily and look at the future with optimism. In Australia there is a good quality of life, the bureaucracy is not a problem and the public transports works very well, you feel safe. The economy is strong, and you can see that the respect for nature is innate in every Australian, such as the importance of practising a sport and travelling.

Do you ever think of going back?

osteria@maccaronitop.com.au www.maccaroniosteria.com.au Maccaroni osteria italiana 201 Queens parade, Clifton Hill 3068 Phone 03 90770377

I miss Italy, I miss the colours, the smells, the flavours, the landscapes, the medieval villages, the monuments, my people, my friends, my family, the football matches and the Sunday afternoons at the bar. However, I don't think I will ever go back. My dream is to work as a site construction manager for an international company and have the opportunity to travel the world.

REGULARS 33

WORDS MARISA FERRARO

I

n a society that cherishes beauty and style as the quintessence of life, women can get carried away. With all the glossy magazines, social media and television advertising, it’s hard not to see the latest anti-wrinkle creams, the ‘IT’ bag that a Kardashian is holding, the newest stilettos for this season, jewellery to match, scented candles, perfume…need I go on. But what is it that gives us women real pleasure? It could be all these things, it could one of them or none at all. Given the sign of the times we work longer hours and juggle our home, work and social life.

So how do women indulge in their pleasures? The first golden rule is to make sure that you take the time for yourself. This is itself the first step to mastering pleasure.

Take the time for that moment. Whether it be sitting in a patisserie eating macaroons and sipping a latte, having a well deserved massage or a manicure or going to a museum for an exhibition. Whatever is of interest to you make it a priority and make the time for yourself. That’s the most important gift you can give yourself. Time.

It is imperative that we enjoy the fun things in life and some would say the finer things in life too. I like both. A woman should always treat herself. Do not wait to the rainy day or ‘If this happens’ or ‘When I do this....’ If you can do it now do it. Don’t put off pleasure.

If you are saving for an expensive bag for your birthday or Christmas then that’s what makes some things worth the wait and appreciative of the moment when you have what you have been wanting for some time.

Ladies of Leisure

Shopping. Now that’s a fun sport. An expensive one but hey, we all do it and love it. So a girl see’s the latest pair of strappy stilettos. Already in her mind she is matching what outfit she can wear with it, where she will wear them and how they would look in her wardrobe and how she will feel in them. Yes, I can see the sigh now. Stilettos does something to a woman. For once you are not only you elongated in stature but it’s a feeling of completing the outfit. Having a boost in esteem, as they make you look good enough to forego the pain they may cause you later in the night. All worth it I must say.

It is so important for a woman to indulge in some much needed pleasure once in a while. Keep the balance. You feel better, your vibe changes, you appreciate the moment and your happy endorphins kick in. Have you made time to indulge and enjoy some of your favourite things? After all, you and you alone are responsible for that. Celebrate being a woman by doing things you love. There is no better time to start doing it than now.

34 REGULARS

WORDS Hayley J. Egan PHOTOS SALVATORE ROSSANO

ten years a stranger STORIES FROM A DECADE LONG RELATIONSHIP WITH ITALY

Witnessing history, TEARS and SACREDNESS in a OLD DISTILLERY in PUGLIA

W

e recieved a text from Enzo at around 5pm. The ‘Pizzica Spagnola’ event is on at ExFadda at 7.

We laughed, assuming he meant some event involving the Jota, the folk music from the Castille region of Spain where we used to live, very different and far less fashionable than Puglia’s lively Pizzica.

We rolled our eyes, because in Puglia, at this time of year, you really can’t accept every invitation, you’d be out of the house all day. Also, if we hadn’t fully embraced the Jota after all our years in Spain, then surely now, that we were in Italy documenting the Italian folk revival, was not the time?

Somehow we ended up there though. The ExFadda in San Vito was an old oil distillery and is now an ‘urban laboratory’, a space for creatives and scholars to unite in what Italians call a centro culturale. The beautiful limewashed stone walls were painted in sparse murals. There were wooden installations and colourful examples of craft everywhere.

There was the kind of purposeful silence found in a library or a sacred space.

When we walked in, an old lady in a house dress was sitting at a bench, her wrists flicking up and down as she worked with a crochet needle making a lime green doily. It was expanding visibly in her hands, and she was surrounded by young women watching in awe.

They do this type of thing so well, the Italians. The country is full of these spaces for artists, artesans and intellectuals to find each other.

They are usually beautiful, old, repurposed buildings, like this one.

There were people of all ages sitting around but everyone was enraptured by the speakers, who were actually not at all concerned with Spain. Enzo must have misunderstood. They were talking about Pizzica and the anthropological research that has been done on the dance ritual. I sat down on overturned beer barrels to make oil pastel drawings with the children, as their father filmed the speeches. They kept quiet and allowed me to listen for about ten minutes. Then we were asked to keep it down by the organiser, but he quickly withdrew his request, proclaiming that children shouldn’t be silenced and it was unfair of him to have asked.

We took them out anyway, to a bar across the road where they were grilling meat on hot coals and offered to make us a mixed plate. I tried a local wine from a large, fancy glass, though it was probably more suited to a tumbler, perhaps even a plastic cup. The suprise of the evening was maretti, tiny sheep livers that really do not taste like offal

at all. As I gave it a nod of approval I was told that the delicacy was typical of San Vito and a particular favourite of my late father-in-law.

This made me smile, because though he is gone, he is somehow ever present as we rediscover Puglia with his two grandchildren.

We crossed the road and went back to the ExFadda in time for the final concert, and as I re-entered the old distillery its high ceilings again reminded me of a church. Three chairs had been set up beside the conference speakers for the musicians. The accordianist was my partner’s first music teacher, who apparently must have gained one kilo per year in the 25 years since their last class. The singer was Lino Sabatelli, an elderly man with very thick glasses.

He was the last living member of a group of musicians who used to actually participate in the ancient ritual surrounding Pizzica Pizzica.

He would enter peoples homes to play for affected tarantate, curing women from the debilitating tarantula’s venom through music and dance.

This was a special thing.

Lino always used to perform with his wife until her recent death, and though his lonliness could be felt in the room his voice rang clear and strong.

It seemed nearly impossible that the sound could be coming from a 90 year old man.

As he played people got up to dance. My daughter was one of the first, jumping and twisting in her little white dress, curls bouncing. Some older ladies stepped back onto her bare toes but she didn’t stop dancing.

As I looked across the crowd I saw a woman around my own age with long dreadlocks, and tanned feet strapped up in grecian style leather sandals. She was staring at the musicians with tears streaming down her face. Another stared pale-faced out at the dancers, partipating with demure flicks of her hips and barely visible bounces onto the balls of her feet. One hand hung by her side, the other was held over her heart.

There are moments, in Italy, where one realises that they are tasting a delicacy that has been prepared in a certain way for decades, and has probably always tasted the same. There are moments where one is aware of witnessing history. There are times when one is so moved by culture that the tears flow freely in a public place. There are times when the sound of guitar, tamburello and voice bouncing off stone walls makes one ponder the differences between a church, and an old oil distillery.

Italy has given me many moments like these.

REGULARS 35

WORDS ENRICO MASSEI & Elizabeth Wisser

AMALSA MAKES THE LAW WORK FOR YOU The changes that the federal government has announced to reduce rorts and abuses in the 457 skilled visa program From the Director's desk – Enrico Massei The Federal government indicated that it will reduce regulation and at the same time strengthen the visa.

Assistant Immigration Minister Michaelia Cash last December released the government’s response to a review into allegation of rorts (a fraudulent or dishonest act or practice) and abuse. Fifty one recommendations will be adopted by the government.

There will be an increased focus on sponsors of 457 visas and also more resource will be made available to monitor the sponsors.

The Assistant Immigration Minister said: “We’re also looking at the introduction of a new penalty making it unlawful for sponsors to be paid for a migration outcome, greater transparency around the department’s sanction processes, increased information sharing

among key government agencies, in particular the Australian Taxation Office”.

The review did not support the allegation that there was wide spread abuse and dishonest practice, however scrutiny is being tightened to ensure that abuse does not take place.

All the recommendations made in the review have not been adopted, for example the review asked for the abolition of labour market testing requires employers to test the local market to see if suitable candidates are available to fill a job before a job is offered to a foreign worker. This practice is to continue to ensure jobs are first filled by suitably qualified Australian citizens.

Trade Union have raised health and safety concerns which may endanger people in the workplace if a suitable standard of English is not maintained.

In general the business community has responded favourably to the review however there is a view that the regulations could have been softened further. These changes are to be put into place by the end of this year, there is however a call from Trade Unions for a broader inquiry into Australian temporary work visas.

Trade Unions are concerned that regulations are being relaxed at a time of high unemployment in general and more specifically in the youth sector.

The government is also reducing the English standard required when testing.

From our Migration Practioner’s Desk – Elizabeth Wisser LL.B, GDLP, Registered Migration Agent MARN: 0959122

457 Long Stay Work Visa The 457 Long Stay Work Visa is a temporary employment visa that allows skilled employees to stay in Australia for up to 4 years while working for a sponsor employer.

To be eligible to apply for this visa you must: • Be nominated by an approved sponsor employer to fill a skilled position • Have the qualifications, experience and employment background that matches the requirements for the position • Show proficiency in English Language.

• Be eligible for any relevant licenses or registration required for the nominated position

Holders of this visa are allowed to: • Work in Australia for up to 4 years • Bring their families with them • Travel in and out of Australia any number of times within that period The 457 Long Stay Work Visa is a sponsored visa, so you must have an employer that has obtained a Sponsorship agreement with the Department of Immigration and Citizenship.

Elizabeth Wisser & Enrico Massei.

To become a 457 Sponsor Business you have to meet the training requirements and accept the obligations of the 457 Sponsor Program.

While an employee is a holder of the 457 Long Stay Work Visa, he must work only for the sponsoring employee, or the visa will be revoked. The employer can only be changed if other eligible business is willing to sponsor you for the same 457 Long Stay Work Visa.

www.amalsa.com.au enquiry@amalsa.com.au 36 REGULARS

WORDS laura d’angelo PHOTO DANIELE CURTO

The Bromance behind Zero95

Francesco Crifó and Andrea Cozzolino Co-Owner of Zero95 Pizzeria.

T

he intention of this article is to bring attention to something that, in my humble opinion, is the most important, enduring aspect of the human experience: true friendship. That combination of unconditional love and affection that, according to an old Swedish proverb, doubles a joy and halves a sorrow.

I was surfing the Internet a few days ago trying to refresh my memory about literature's most famous friends. Frodo and Sam, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, the Three Musketeers, Sal and Dean from Jack Kerouac's novel “On The Road”. They all go through epic episodes showing reciprocal loyalty at every turn.

That was how I came across this super fascinating new word: bromance. As you can see from the above title, I thought it was such a cool term that I decided to borrow it.

A bromance is simply the intimate bond between two (or more) men, which brings me to the success story of Zero95, and the friendship it was built on.

Zero95, once an anonymous solarium, is now a bustling woodfire pizza-bar in Doncaster East.

It’s always packed with people, so I took my Melbournian Aunt to find out the secret to their success. Despite her intentions to stick to a post-Christmas diet, Auntie J. enjoyed a guiltless overdose of awesome food, from entree to dessert.

“The best place I have ever eaten!” was the verdict “Spot on, Laura!”

Zero95 use the best and freshest ingredients, and the magic of a wood-fired oven, built back in Naples and shipped by boat through several storms to finally arrive in Melbourne and provide our city with Pizza Napoletana! To arouse your curiosity even more, I can confirm that around 8 or 9 pm, a couple of Mediterranean elves in white suits and little hats make pieces of dough fly and dance. Pizza Acrobatics.

and they are proving the strength of their bromance on the most dangerous ground, in business, where every decision is shared. Long hours, massive stress and the constant challenges of running a business have not been enough to break their special bond. Ciccio and Andrea have instead a mutual enthusiasm to do more and do better, and to continue complementing each other in their professional skills and personal qualities. “Nothing is gonna defeat us!” they say.

To think that Ciccio and Andrea met just three years ago. A random meeting of two Italian expats turned into a strong friendship from which Zero95 was born. Since then they have been sharing time, dreams, passions, ambitions and fears on a regular basis.

I asked the friendly employees of the restaurant a few questions, trying to dig up some dirt on the pair, to no avail! “We have never seen the bosses arguing” the staff confirmed, and I don’t think they were just looking for a pay rise. “We all feel equally part of the team.”

The next day, Auntie J. asked her husband to play the lottery. She was hoping for the jackpot that would allow them to hire Andrea and Ciccio as personal chefs. Still waiting for a win, all we can do is keep frequenting Zero95, probably for my upcoming birthday, to share a great pizza (and more) with a group of true friends.

The young Francesco Crifò and Andrea Cozzolino (eighth place in the last Pizza world championship held in Naples) have more than a decade experience in hospitality and pizza making. One day, back in Italy, someone asked them a single, dispassionate question: “Have you ever thought about moving to Australia?” Soon after, they landed Down Under, “Not even a word of English”, Andrea underlines, an obstacle quickly overcome, not preventing the two buddies from finding a job in some of Melbourne’s best restaurants. Beyond their business Zero95, their goal is to share the secrets of a true Pizza Napoletana, providing private and group masterclasses for Pizza lovers.

The elves are the owners, Ciccio and Andrea. They are best friends REGULARS 37

words and photos Home Make It

The CRAFT of homemade

WINEMAKING

W ha t yo u ne ed to kn ow

S

ince the early manual practices of artisanal winemaking, knowledge of the winemaking process has been cultivated, refined and shared amongst families and fellow winemakers.

During the1960’s, Lou Baggio, founder of Home Make It, was at the forefront of redefining the arduous process of winemaking by developing and manufacturing winemaking equipment such as grape presses and crushers to assist migrant Italians in Australia to be able to continue to uphold these classic traditions.

Over the years, Home Make It has sought to further simplify the winemaking process by embracing modern practices whilst still appreciating the traditional craft, and further enhance the winemaking experience by eliminating some of the guesswork and minimizing the ever-present chances of spoilage. The vast showcase of winemaking equipment along with the introduction of winemaking kits with all the key ingredients included have contributed to many homemade wine success stories.

WINE BASICS & TRICKS OF THE TRADE • Various wine styles • Wine additives and how to use them • Good grape selection • Wine making essentials (dosages and measurements)

CRUSHING & FERMENTATION • Grape crushing techniques • Fermentation processes • Yeast types • Nutrient types • Enzymes

Complimenting the user-friendly winemaking kits and equipment range, Home Make It also provide a free wine testing and analysis service by providing the community with expert advice throughout the winemaking process. By testing grape juice early in the practice, issues can be identified and remedied by implementing the necessary adjustments required to produce better quality outcomes.

“We recommend bringing in samples of grape juice to be tested at every stage of the winemaking process – especially at the crushing, pressing, fermentation, racking and bottling stages” says Celeste Baggio, co-founder of Home Make It.

• Winemaking kits and how to use them

Winemaking is yet another one of those timeless Italian traditions that interweaves into the fabric of their culture. It is considered an integral part of the meal, complimenting rich Italian cuisine perfectly.

Learn more about Italian culture and the traditional food and drink practices, including all the recipes in Home Make It’s newly released book titled The Makers: a story of food, family and foreigners. Copies of The Makers are available for purchase online via the Home Make It website at www.homemakeit.com or in store.

For those who may be keen to have a go at producing their own red, white, sparkling or fruit wine this year, come along and participate in Home Make It’s Advanced Homemade Winemaking course and learn all the tips of the trade with hands-on experience of making your own batch of wine with the class of 2016.

38 REGULARS

• How to rehydrate yeasts • How to deal with stuck ferments and other fermentation problems • Additive additions to wine during fermentation

oc es s ab ou t th e w in em ak in g pr PRESSING, MALOLACTIC FERMENTATION & STORAGE TECHNIQUES • Pressing techniques • Grape juice management

• Winemaking faults and analysis • Wine blending techniques

RACKING & PRESERVING PROCESSES

• Malolactic fermentation – part 1

• Racking techniques

• Wine storage options; tanks, demijohns and

• Preservative techniques and options

barrels

MALOLACTIC FERMENTATION OAK, FININGS & BARRELS

• Fermentation and racking problems and solutions

WINE FILTRATION & BOTTLING • Wine maturation

• Malolactic fermentation – part 2

• Wine adjustments and filtration

• Oak types and use

• Wine bottling techniques

• Fining agents and trails • Barrel maintenance and assessment

WINE ADJUSTMENTS, WINE FAULTS & BLENDING TECHNIQUES

En jo y!

• Wine adjustments during maturation

For more details and to book your place online visit: www.homemakeit.com.

Contact the Home Make It team for further information or assistance with the winemaking process and tips.

Clayton Store: (03) 9574 8222 Reservoir Store: (03) 9460 2777 info@homemakeit.com.au www.homemakeit.com.au REGULARS 39 11

WORDS and Photo Archimede Fusillo

A future In Their Past part 6

I

n 1974, after 14 years in Australia, Signor Gino Milano, a native of Marsicovetere in the Basilicata region of Southern Italy, decided enough was enough, and with two Australian born children in tow, decided to return to his native village.

It was a choice he made, he explained, because despite his relative success at finding work in various industries, Australia simply didn’t offer him the lifestyle he had craved and expected, and he wanted to return while his children were still young enough to go to school in Italy.

“Abbiamo sgobbato, poveri noi, figli di mamma”, he told me. (We worked hard, all of us poor sons of mothers). “Lavoravo di notte. E di giorno cercavo altro lavoro. In Australia, per guadagnarti una casa ci dovevi rimettere sangue”. (I worked at night and sought other work in the daytime. In Australia, you had to literally spill blood to be able to afford a house).

A lively and very forthright man now somewhere in his seventies, Signor Milano, made a point of demonstrating his passion for and the significance of, the English language, by making frequent references to the phrases he most employed during his time in Australia. In addition, not surprisingly they were largely to do with seeking employment, finding accommodation and living day to day.

“L’ Australia era piacevole”, he told me repeatedly. (Australia was very pleasant). But it was however a pleasantness tempered with struggles to find employment, often made all the more frustrating by the general distrust many locals had of migrants. This distrust, according to Signor Milano was mainly predicated on the belief that migrants were out to take work away from the local, Anglo-Saxon citizen.

education, and only a small circle of friends and paesani who understood and related to the challenges faced by likewise migrants.

With his wife also working, and their paths often only crossing briefly when one was returning and other leaving for work or in search of same, Signor Milano managed to build a home and pay it off in 4 years, get his driver’s licence, and move from fairly menial work at General Motors Holden (GMH), to doing some quite precise technical work for CIG, all the while proving to his employees that he was both a quick learner and a reliable worker.

“You is good worker, Mr Milano,” he told me proudly in English of his varied employers oft repeated opinion of him. “You is very good worker.”

Signor Milano readily admits that Australia gave him opportunities that would not have come his way in Italy, or if they had, would have proven much more difficult in realising. His own parents even made the trip out to Australia, ostensibly with a view to perhaps staying, but they couldn’t adjust to the lifestyle and went back to Italy after an unspecified short period of time.

Ultimately though it was a realisation that in order for his family to maintain the lifestyle they were developing in Australia, both he and his wife would have to keep working indefinitely, that made up his mind to leave. It would not be enough for him alone to work and carry the family forward toward a sistemazione, so often quoted by migrants as the reason why they had left Italy behind in the first instance.

Signor Milano told of one particular Scottish foreman who constantly sought to give him the very worst of jobs within the company for whom he was working at the time. “Aggiungi questo al più brutto lavoro”, he recalled overhearing. “Litigavo sempre. C’era un anziano australiano che mi rimproverava ad ogni opportunità, anche quando non me lo meritavo”. (Give this one the very worst job. I was constantly bickering. There was one elderly Australian man who told me off at every opportunity, even when I didn’t deserve it).

“Allora mi sono detto, se questa è l’Australia, allora no!” he gushed.

(If this indeed is what Australia is all about, then no-it’s not for me.)

And on what Signor Milano said, it was really a whim that he decided to pack up his still young children and move with them back to Italy.

When asked how his Australian born children took to this sudden change in circumstance and location, Signor Milano was rather coy, and all he offered was, “L’ Australia era bella. I ragazzi hanno pensato chissá quali opportunitá avrebbero potuto avere se saremmo rimasti lí.

Ma non sanno che da tutte le parti c’è il male e il bene”. (Australia was beautiful. My children have asked themselves, who knows what might have been had we stayed in Australia. However, what they don’t realise is that there is good and bad everywhere).

However, like so many of the people I had the pleasure of meeting, resilience was part of Signor Milano’s constitution. He forged a very productive life in Australia against the many sometimes oppressive odds that included a minimal grasp of the local language, little formal

Signor Milano’s most telling comment perhaps was his parting one to me. “Io però non mi sono pentito mai”. (Personally, I have never regretted my decision) Though whether he meant to go to Australia or to leave it after 14 years...or indeed, both, he didn’t elaborate upon.

40 REGULARS

Pizza is the of Naples!

A Pizza è o ‘core e napule Address 321 High Street, Kew VIC 3101

|

Phone 03 9853 5155

|

Website www.circa900.com.au

WORDS IVANO ERCOLE

AUSTRALIAN DIARY

The mischievous side of the technological progress

M

igration has always occurred in human history as a result of what can be described as either a ‘push’ or ‘pull’ movement of people. If one considers the great shifts to or from the Western world, the first happened across the 4th and 5th century after Christ and it was a ‘push’, with hordes of people invading the Roman Empire and eventually causing its fall.

The second, also from East to West, took place from the 17th to the 19th century when white slavers, usually with the complicity of tribal chiefs, caught and transported Africans to the Caribbean and the southern United States. In that case, the main moving force was the ‘pull’ of profitability.

Stockist AIRPORT WEST

BRAVISSIMI SCHOOL 1/93 Macnamara Avenue Airport West Vic 3043 ALBERT PARK L’ ALTRO MONDO RESTAURANT 125 Victoria Ave Albert Park Vic 3206 ARMADALE GIORGIO’S RESTAURANT Street Armadale Vic 3143

In the third major migratory wave peaking between the end of the 19th century and the start of the 20th, Europeans - amongst whom millions of Italians - settled North America. They were pushed by repeated periods of agricultural depression and partly natural calamities such as the Irish famine.

BEACONSFIELD

Migration in Europe since World War II has been too chaotic for a dominant trend to be discerned. Two of the early streams of Turks to Germany and Arabs to France, were mostly responses to the full employment opportunities in western Europe and were fully agreed to by the host countries. The flight from Soviet Russia and its satellites to the West was more due to what has come to be called "asylum seeking" than to economic calculus.

VENETO CLUB 91 Bulleen Road Vic 3105

Today's most migrants to Europe and Australia are of the ‘push’ kind and are divided into two categories. One enters the destination country with a regular visa. They come as students, tourists, relatives of residents and for other genuine reasons and false pretexts. Once their visa has expired, they overstay it and become ‘illegal’ while those who fall under the second category arrive ‘illegally’, usually by sea, and are considered belonging to the more threatening and unacceptable of the two categories.

The hard-nosed majority of most European countries and Australia, while less vocal than the human rights championing minority who speak from the ethical pulpit, are more and more upset to find that they and their government have so little say in deciding how many non-natives, and of what kind, come and settle in their country.

The main cause of this ‘push’ of stacks of migrants towards Western countries, is said to be the occurrence of wars that are lacerating their lives in their native countries and in some cases, like Syria’s, it is true. Yet the vast majority are driven by the effects of the world-wide expansion of communications and above all television. There are now countless millions of people in the poorest regions of earth who can watch on television images of universal comfort and abundance of the industrialised societies.

Probably never before in pre-television ages the gap between the affluence ‘over there’ and the abject poverty ‘over here’ has been as sharply and as widely perceived as it is today.

It is not too fanciful to conclude that if it had not been for television, poverty and hopelessness would not be so painfully pushing some of the best people of Africa and the Middle East to force their way into the more prosperous reality western people have built for themselves over the centuries. We cannot even imagine what Internet - when it will become easily accessible across the whole world - will add to the effects of television. It’s the mischievous side of the extraordinary technological progress achieved in the West.

42 REGULARS

list

SERGIO CARLEI WINERY Albert road Upper Beaconsfield Vic 3808 BULLEEN

BUNDOORA FILA OUTLET Brand Junction 2 Janefield Drive Shop T18 Bundoora Vic 3083 CAMBERWELL ANGELUCCI Prospect Hill Road Camberwell Vic 3124 MONACO’S CONTINENT AL DELICATESSEN & FOOD STORE 525 Camberwell Road Camberwell Vic 3124 COFFEE MAX Burke Road Camberwell Vic 3124 CANBERRA FILA OUTLET Brand Outlet Centre Shop T146 337 Canberra Avenue Fyshwick Act 2609 CARLTON/BRUNSWICK READINGS 309 Lygon Street Carlton Vic 3053 BLACK ORANGE BOUTIQUE 380 Lygon Street Carlton Vic 3053 DOC ESPRESSO 326 Lygon Steet Carlton Vic 3053 CO.AS.IT. 189 Faraday Street Carlton Vic 3053 MUSEO ITALIANO 199 Faraday Street Carlton Vic 3053 NERO CARLTON 204-218 Lygon Street Carlton Vic 3053 LA LATTERIA 104 Elgin Street Carlton Vic 3053 NEWSAGENCY 3/4 Lygon Street Carlton VIC 3053

FORZA ITALIA 204 Lygon Street Carlton Vic 3053 400 GRADI CICCHETTI Lygon Street Brunswick Vic 3055

FILA OUTLET Direct Factory Outlet Level 1 - Shop T78 201 Spencer Street Docklands Vic 3008

LIEVITÀ 98 High Street Northcote Vic 3070

ELWOOD

IL MELOGRANO 76 High Street Northcote Vic 3070

400 GRADI PIZZERIA Lygon Street Brunswick Vic 3055

ZANINI PIZZERIA 106 ormond Road Elwood Vic 3184

BAR NONNO 83 High Street Northcote Vic 3070

Abruzzo Club 377 Lygon Street East Brunswick VIC 3057

ESSENDON

PRAHRAN

400 GRADI Shop 1, 110 Keilor Road, Essendon VIC 3040

DONNA ANGELINA 3-5 Cecil Place, Prahran VIC 3181

FILA OUTLET Direct Factory Outlet Bulla Road Shop T19 Essendon Airport Vic

PRAHRAN/TOORAK

CBD LA CAMERA Shop MR2 Mid Level East End Southgate Avenue, Southgate CentreSouthgate Vic 3006 MACCARONI TRATTORIA ITALIANA Manchester Lane Melbourne Vic 3000 GRADI AT CROWN Shop 25, 8 Whiteman Street Southbank Vic 3046 FILA OUTLET Direct Factory Outlet Shop G016, 20 Convention Centre Place Southwharf Vic 3006

FITZROY FILA OUTLET Nicholson Street Fitzroy Vic 3065 FITZROY NORTH MACCARONI OSTERIA ITALIANA 201 Queens Parade Fitzroy North Vic 3068

CAFÉ LATTE 521 Malvern Road Toorak Vic 3142 OFFICINE ZERO – SLITTI 534 Malvern Road Prahran Vic 3181 PRESTON NOI PIZZERIA 60 High Street Preston Vic 3072

GLEN IRIS

DAVIER HAIR ITALY 4/103 High Street Preston Vic 3072

CLAYTON

MINITALIA LAB 200 Glen Iris Road Glen Iris Vic 3146

HOME MAKE IT 256 Spring Street Reservoir VIC 3073

HOME MAKE IT 4/158 Wellington Road Clayton VIC 3168

HAMPTON

SOUTH YARRA

COLLINGWOOD

LA SVOLTA 450 Hampton Street, Hampton VIC 3188

ISTITUTO ITALIANO DI CULTURA 233 Domain Road South Yarra Vic 3141

THE CRAFT & CO 390 Smith Street Collingwood VIC 3066

HAWTORN

CONSOLATO ITALIANO GENERALE D’ITALIA 509 St Kilda Road Melbourne Vic 3004

BINI’S GALLERY 62 Smith Street Collingwood Vic 3066

QUINTI - TUSCAN LIFESTYLE 636 Glenferrie Road Hawtorn Vic 3122

ST. KILDA

SANTONI PIZZERIA 634 Glenferrie Road Hawtorn Vic 3122

I CARUSI II 231 Barkly Street St. Kilda Vic 3182

FILA OUTLET Direct Factory Outlet Corner Centre Shop T59, Dandenong & Grange Road Cheltenham Vic 3192

KEW

SORSI & MORSI 29 - 31 Blessington Street St Kilda Vic 3182

ROMA DELI 32 Gladstone Road Dandenong Vic 3175

MALVERN

DANDENONG

DOCKLANDS WATERFRONT DOCKLANDS RESTAURANT Tenancy 9, 800 Bourke Street The Promenade Victoria Harbour Docklands Vic 3008 FILA OUTLET Waterfront City Harbourtown S/C Shop SCG03 Docklands Vic 3008 FILA OUTLET Direct Factory Outlet Level 1 - Shop T78 201 Spencer Street Docklands Vic 3008 DONCASTER ZERO95 PIZZA BAR 904 Doncaster Road Doncaster East Vic 3108 COFFEE MAX Williamsons Road Doncaster Vic 3108

CIRCA900 PIZZERIA NAPOLETANA 321 High Street Kew Vic 3101 SAGRA 256 -258 Glenferrie Road Malvern Vic 3144 READINGS 185 Glenferrie Road Malvern Vic 3144 CAFFE’ LA VIA 252 Glenferrie Road Malvern Vic 3144 ETTO PASTA 216 Glenferrie Road Malvern Vic 3144 MORNINGTON

IL FORNAIO 2 Acland Street St Kilda Vic 3182 LA FORMAGGERIA 68-72A Acland Street St Kilda Vic 3182 THOMASTOWN THAT’S AMORE CHEESE - CHEESE SHOP 66 Latitude Blvd Thomastown Vic 3074 RICHMOND SYLK HAIR BOUTIQUE Shop F36 Victoria Gardens Shopping Center 620 Victoria Street Richmond Vic 3128

DOC PIZZA & MOZZARELLA BAR 22, Main Street Mornington Vic 3931 NORTHCOTE MARCIANÒ MUSIC 453 High Street Northcote Vic 3070 43

Spencer Print and Design Specialists

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526 La Trobe Street I Melb 3000 CALL US FOR A FREE NO OBLIGATION QUOTE

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MaraForni na The Original Italian Rotating Pizza Oven

MADE

IN

R

ITALY

AVAILABLE IN

TANGANELLI

WOOD

GAS

PELLET

COMBINED

Why a Marana Forni?

• Marana Forni ovens are made in Italy to the highest of standards, from design to craftsmanship production of every single part.

Mosaic Finishing

TROFEO

u Best Q

• No more burnt pizzas! No more turning the pizzas! No more reaching the back of the oven! The oven does the work.

CUPOLA NAPOLI

• The self rotating function creates a fast, evenly cooked pizza every time regardless at the user.

• Save recovery time during busy period with the patented SU&GIU® function, allowing the cooking deck to be raised into the dome of the oven to reach always the temperature you need. Pizza quality inalterated!

a li ty

Marana Forni ovens are currently cooking great pizzas in over 60 countries around the world!

Marana Forni over the years has developed, built and patented several systems thanks to its commitment to a never ending technology upgrade.

Marana Forni quality is certified worldwide.

Our gas burners suit the Australian standard.

GEA

CUPOLA NAPOLI Brushed Finishing

see Official Listing

Available in Australia EXCLUSIVELY from:

Marana Forni MADE

IN

ITALY

MARANA FORNI Australian Branch R

Mr. Corrado Passilongo – Mobile +61 497583212 sales@maranaforni.net.au www.maranaforni.net.au

romadeli.com.au

www.