Why Italy?
Positano, Italy 2011
Although I was born in Australia, my life began in Italy. My parents, and my five-year-old brother, were living in the leafy outer suburbs of Rome when I was conceived. My father was nearing the end of a one-year contract working for FAO, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations. He’s told me stories of my mother trying to drive and park a Volvo station wagon around the small streets in the centre of Rome.
In September 1985, nine months after he, my mother and brother returned to Australia, my father wrote a letter to old friends. He describes it as an all too short, magical year in Italy, terminated mainly because I could not stand any longer the life of an FAO Headquarters employee. I also wonder whether their return had anything to do with my mother falling pregnant. On 9 July 1985, seven months after moving from Rome to Canberra, I was born.
“It’s one of my greatest regrets that we returned to Australia,” my father once told me. “You could have been born in Italy.”
My father is full of regrets in his old age. Too much time to think. But that particular comment was prompted by my complaints. I’d been lamenting that my British passport — my free pass to live and work in Italy whenever and for however long I wished — was soon to be useless, at least in Italy. After five years of negotiations, the United Kingdom was about to leave the European Union.
I’d been fortunate that my dual Australian and British citizenships — my British obtained through my father — had allowed me to travel so freely. I’d already travelled fairly extensively through the UK and Europe but I kept going back to Italy. By the age of 35, when Brexit was finalised, I’d already travelled from Australia to Italy six times. On one occasion, I’d lived there for six months. Over the years I had fallen in love — with the country, its people, the language, and, though it hadn’t worked out, an Italian man. In the future, I’d always pictured myself living in Italy for an extended period of time but Brexit was about to make that difficult.
“It would be handy to have an Italian passport,” I told Dad, “but I’m happy to have been born in Australia. So lucky to have been born here.”
I was telling him the truth but I felt then as I feel now — that part of my heart will always be in Italy. I have a connection to that country which I cannot explain. Is it because that’s where I was created? What a magical thought — that perhaps my blood was infused with Italy and its culture before anyone knew I existed.
