Coming up this street in Fossa always feels like being ‘almost home’ whether returning from nearby L’Aquila or a long flight from Australia. For just around the next corner is my family’s house and while it has centuries of history, to me it also has that comforting feel like coming to stay at your grandparents’ house.
From blossoms to broccoli…
Came across this photograph of my family’s Applethorpe farm in the 1950s with the orchard in flower and realised when I was there doing research for Mezza and Joe’s, I happened to take a picture from almost the same spot 60 years later.
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patting ‘the little pigs’ for luck…
Patting il Porcellino, ‘the little pig’ for luck, (left) in Sydney, (right) in Florence. These bronze, wild boar (cinghiale) sculptures are replicas of the original by Pietro Tacca (1577-1640) commissioned by Cosimo II de Medici in 1621 that is now in the Museo Bardini. Apparently since at least 1633 visitors to Florence have ‘rubbed the snout’ for luck and to ensure their return to the city and tourists now rub it so much they have to replace the sculpture every decade or so.
The Florence ‘piglet’ is located in Mercato Nuovo also known as the Porcellino market and the Sydney one, (donated by Marchesa Fiaschi Torrigiani in 1968) is outside Australia’s oldest hospital, Sydney Hospital, in Macquarie Street. There are dozens of others around Europe, America, Canada, the UK and Asia so perhaps unlikely I’ll get to pat them all but hopefully might have just enough luck from these two!
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the gentle work of nest building…
Have some long, solitary hours ahead for a little while as I do the edit on the next book… so it was lovely to sit at my desk this morning and look out into the tree to see a honeyeater building a nest right by my window. I may even get some baby birds for company come spring!
A while back I read in a book (Nest: The Art of Birds by Janine Burke) that as well as using their beaks to build their nests, birds also press their breasts against the inner wall to make it round, imprinting their shape on their home and forming it with their beating hearts. As I sit here I can see the bird doing just that! (Apologies the picture isn’t better but didn’t want to move too much and scare her off.)
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From Monte Circolo…
My grandfather, Annibale, on the eastern edge of Monte Circolo near Castle Ocre looking over the Aterno Valley (with Fossa just below) in 1975. It was the first time he was able to return to the village and was so happy to revisit all the places of where he’d grown up.
Exactly 30 years later, I took the other photo from almost the same spot. I didn’t know about this photograph of Nonno Anni at the time but I think one day I’ll have to attempt to replicate it by standing on the same rock. He was about 52 in that photo, perhaps when the time comes I should try getting the similar shot at the same age!
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Beyond the earthquake…
Since the earthquake, my family’s house in Italy remains too damaged to stay in. Much of the village remains empty. And now, thieves have broken into the house. They mainly upturned drawers adding to the mess of earthquake damage, since belongings inside are mostly of sentimental value, but of course it is another blow.
For the past week, my cousin has been there cleaning up and an unexpected side to what’s happened is that she’s come across old documents, letters written by our great-grandparents and photographs, including this lovely find!
My mother (on the left) was just twenty-two at the time when she and my Dad were the first to travel back to the house after the family migrated to Australia decades earlier. Pierina (on the right) is the relative who lived in the house and kept it maintained all those years before the family could return. This was taken in Fossa just before Christmas in 1970.
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Sitting still…
Sometimes it’s those little slivers in a day that you remember and miss most when you are far away… like stepping onto the balcony of my family’s house in Italy in late afternoon to sit overlooking the laneway seeing people stroll by below, hearing a Vespa buzz past and with the only thing to think about perhaps cooking dinner.
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Festa della Repubblica from afar….
Brisbane’s Victoria Bridge lit in the colours of the Italian flag for Festa della Repubblica – Italy’s national day… if only my grandparents and great-grandparents could see this!
So lovely to have my hometown honour its history of Italian migrants in this gesture. Auguri per Festa della Repubblica to all those with an Italian migrant connection!! xx
Cocullo serpent festival…
This Thursday the festival of the snakes will again happen at Cocullo in Abruzzo as it has each year on the first Thursday of May from at least as far back as 1392. It still has an impact when I think back to when I saw it twelve years ago. The crowds, the food, the anticipation, the snakes… Most of all, I came away with a feeling of euphoria. I mentioned in Mezza Italiana that I reached out and touched one of the snakes (it was one of those held in the third last picture). I wasn’t sure how I’d be around literally hundreds of snakes for the first time but I have to say I felt compassion for them more than fear. The last picture is a painting Estella Canziani did of the festival for San Domenico back in 1913. Compared to when I was there 92 years later, it seemed little had changed…
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Some of Fossa’s laneways…
… at around dawn while most of the village still slept.
These are just a few of the lanes that wind under, over and around the village and to me they are magical. Some tunnels have small frescoes and lanterns in them.
Most are just wide enough for a tiny car, others only able to be walked. The dog on the steps is Musso Nero, the village dog who was looked after by everybody {page 328, Mezza Italiana}.
I took these photographs with black and white film and an old Pentax camera more than a decade ago while staying in the village writing Mezza Italiana.
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Mezza Italiana to be released in the US next year….
I’m thrilled to say that in 2018 Mezza Italiana will be available in the US in paperback and ebook.
Many thanks to ABC books, HarperCollins AUS and HarperCollins360 US.
More closer to the date! xx
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Dolci con il caffè…
The dilemma of what to have with a coffee… took this in the gorgeous Gran Caffé, Assisi.
{Music: Coffee Cold by Galt MacDermot.}
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From a laneway in Fossa…
I took this from the tiny balcony of the house in Fossa. As Roger walked along the laneway below on his way to the Boccabella shop and passed someone on their phone, he had no idea I was taking a photograph from above.
It is some years ago now, at a time when we were staying in the family house at the village in Abruzzo for a month and I was starting to write Mezza Italiana. It feels so strange to know that the damaged house now stands empty and the village a ghost town since the earthquake.
But I also feel so fortunate and grateful for the times I got to the experience the village at its happy and lively best, the connection it gave me to family and for the stories it has given, and hopefully will continue to give.
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First of the purple snow peas…

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buon anno a tutti…
A much younger me at the window of the medieval Castle Ocre above Fossa in Abruzzo…
It’s now more than 20 years since this was taken on my first trip to the village in Italy where part of my family came from. I never expected the impact this journey would have, how it would come to be something I would write about or that the castle would be badly damaged by earthquake and partially collapse thirteen years later.
Change is constant – both the good and the difficult. I hope this fresh year brings you a lovely, new experience no matter how small or large that may come to make you look back and feel such surprise and gladness. Tante belle cose, Zoe xx
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Christmas shopping…
Couldn’t resist taking a quick picture of these Italian products I saw as part of a Christmas display in the general supermarket of a country town in Australia. And both northern and southern Italy represented!
There was once a time when it was unusual to see even a panettone in the supermarket of an Australian capital city let alone a smaller town. So lovely how food can quietly keep on bringing different cultures together!
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pomodori verdi ~ green tomatoes…
Unexpectedly found these beauties growing behind another plant in a pot on the balcony. Completely self-sown! There must be at least thirty cherry tomatoes on the plant. A lovely, surprise present from nature. Can’t wait for them to ripen!
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Stitching, thread and pine needles…
Came across this lovely linen, hand towel, circa 1940s/1950s, hand-embroidered to be a keepsake from Norfolk Island. (The picture frame is circa 1920s that I already had and happened to be a lucky fit!)
As some may know from my books, collecting hand-sewn, vintage linens began for me with pieces I inherited from my Australian and Italian grandmothers. Continuing to collect such pieces crept up on me and took hold after I found myself sorting through a trestle table of vintage linens at a market stall in L’Aquila.
Good sellers of vintage linens will always have them in neat, clean condition, usually ironed and often starched too. I love to wonder about who may have taken the time and effort to have made that item many decades before. Perhaps this one was sewn by someone snug inside on a windy, wintry day on Norfolk Island!
{Linen is from Geordie Lane, Maleny.}
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From over the Aterno Valley, Abruzzo…
The steeple of Santa Maria Assunta in Fossa… the church that sits opposite my family’s house in Abruzzo. It was lovely to walk along the lanes below and listen to the bell tolling the time of day or to hear it from afar when you were on your way back to the village.
When I took this in 2005, it was a beautiful, serene day with no hint that just four years later the steeple’s turret would be gone when the earthquake caused it to crash down through the church roof.
Originally built in the 1200s, the church was expanded during the 1400s and then partly rebuilt following the earthquake of 1703. (At this time, my family’s house was about a decade old and had experienced its first terremoto.) I took this photograph with my old Pentax camera on black and white film. Although just over a decade ago, I didn’t yet have a digital camera then!
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from Italia to Australia…
Another piece from my Italian great-grandmother, Bisnonna Francesca’s glory box… (Cesca in my books). This hand-embroidered pillow sham from 1920s Calabria travelled in the hull of a ship across the world to a new life in Australia and remained tucked away for many decades… a keepsake of another place and life that might have been.
Filed under garden + vintage linens, inspiration + history, italy
a stone house among the lavender…
Swiss Italian, Aquilino Tinetti originally built this stone farmhouse at Shepherds Flat in central Victoria circa 1860. He and his wife Maria had thirteen children and the 100 acres were run as a dairy farm for the next 120 years.
In the 1980s, Carol White purchased the property, restored the historic stone buildings and planted lavender and it is now called Lavandula.
It is a beautiful place to visit and as part of research for the next book especially interesting for me to see the original 19th century farmhouse set up including a great cellar below a very steep, internal staircase, and also some friends in the kitchen garden…
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with needle and thread…

Filed under garden + vintage linens, inspiration + history
Earthquake in central Italy…
Stretti abbracciati to all in Accumoli, Amatrice, Arquata del Tronto, Pescara del Tronto and the surrounding towns to have faced the most recent earthquake in central Italy. I have not experienced such a terremoto though being in Abruzzo weeks after the 2009 earthquake I saw up close the devastation on towns and the despair and pain wrought on people and animals. I keep thinking of those who are currently living through this tragedy and those survivors of 2009 who felt the quake being fifty kilometres south. Both quakes occurred just after 3.30am, the most dangerous time when people are vulnerable in sleep. While the people of the Apennine Mountains in central Italy are strong and know living amid such exquisite beauty has its underside, this is a great blow to bear when recovery is still ongoing from the 2009 earthquake. There were those who experienced it and moved north to be safer and have now had the trauma of another. Again, abbracci to all…
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To come from what is left behind…
As much as migrants love and embrace their new country, many cannot help but feel they’ve left a piece of themselves behind… and often those born in later generations still feel that bind as well.
This poignant sculpture at Marseilles is by Bruno Catalano, Moroccan-born in a Sicilian family who later moved to France. Being ten years old and watching from a boat his native land fade away had a profound impact that would stay with him throughout his life.
Bruno Catalano
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From the glory box of my bisnonna…
The initials of my great-grandmother, bisnonna Francesca Carrozza, hand-stitched onto this linen pillow cover in 1920s Calabria for her glory box that was to end up in 1930s Australia. I didn’t fully appreciate these linens when I was young but they have since become precious to me.
Filed under garden + vintage linens, inspiration + history, italy
Books update…
Mezza Italiana now available in the UK
Including at bookstores such as Foyles, Waterstones, WHSmith and others as well as online stores.
It is available in paperback, ebook and audiobook.
Many thanks to ABC Books and HarperCollins 360 UK!!
________________________________________
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the Violet Coast of west Calabria…
Costa Viola…the Violet Coast of west Calabria (when I took this the violet colour of melding sea and sky seemed even more vibrant in reality).
This view of the Tyrrhenian Sea is what my Italian grandmother, Nanna Francesca, saw from the balcony of her childhood home – her grandmother’s house – where she and her mother lived after her father went to Australia in 1927.
The house is now gone but I took this from the street where it stood. Those hills across the sea in the distance are in Sicily. Closer are some of the palm trees that give the small, coastal town that was my grandmother’s birthplace its name – Palmi. Though hard to spot, the tall-masted boats on the sea are sword-fishing boats.
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Ethel’s Chooks…
Perhaps it’s old-fashioned but I still have a wall calendar where I write up all that’s happening. This year it features paintings by William T. Cooper (1934-2015) an Australian artist who painted mostly natural subjects, especially birds. He painted with extreme precision so if there were a certain number of a certain colour feathers then that is exactly what he depicted.
While he painted many exotic species too, I love this painting, Ethel’s Chooks, which Cooper painted of his neighbour’s chooks that free ranged around the farm. When I sit down to my desk each day, seeing the work and precision Cooper put into his art is inspiring. His career as an artist spanned more than 50 years and he continued to paint into his 80s.
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Seven years on from the earthquake…
On the anniversary of the 2009 Abruzzo earthquake today, I’m thinking of the 309 people who lost their lives and the many thousands who continue to reside in temporary housing seven years on.
This recent article from the Irish Times sheds some light on where reconstruction efforts in L’Aquila currently stand…
Seven years on, shadow of earthquake still hangs over L’Aquila.
As well as the damage to the Abruzzo capital, many surrounding small towns also continue to be affected in the aftermath including the villages where my family comes from and the house that has belonged to the family for generations. Many of these once lively villages remain almost ghost towns while it is assumed they have been rebuilt.
Stiamo pensando di tutti voi.
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Window light….
This window in the small house in Italy, that has sheltered different generations of my family for centuries, is my favourite. It is the tiniest and gives a view out over the village of Fossa like peering from a cubby house. I also love that it shows how thick the stone walls are.
Currently, the house still stands uninhabited and damaged as it was from the day of the earthquake back in 2009 but the good news is, after a long wait, it seems several villagers are now in the process of their houses starting to be repaired.
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Grandmother memories ~ memorie nonna…
Today, my Italian grandmother, Francesca, would have been 90 years old. This is one of my favourite photographs of her, taken with friends in the Botanic Gardens circa 1950s.
Although it has been some years now that Nanna Francesca has been gone, for me she lives on in memories of our cooking, shopping and going to the ‘picture theatre’ together, and every time I put one of her tablecloths on the table or there is simmering ‘pasta gravy’, made just like hers, on the stove.
Con amore, molte grazie e auguri, cara Nonna Francesca. xxx
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The path toward a fresh year…
A new year stretches ahead and there is something thrilling and also sobering in not knowing where our paths may meander as the months unfold. Hope this year is a wonderful one for you that brings much happiness! I couldn’t go past this beautiful painting by L’Aquila artist, Juan Alfredo Parisse to begin the year. He painted it on the road below my family’s village of Fossa in the Aterno Valley of Abruzzo and it is called, Verso Fossa.
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keeping the past present…

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Tower of Palazzo Vecchio and the Galleria degli Uffizi in Firenze…
…taken in 2005 when I was about to join the queue to the gallery. At the time, it was 240 years since the Uffizi Gallery officially opened to the public in 1765 and I love the thought that perhaps standing in this spot a couple of centuries ago with everyone wearing the clothing of the time, we could still look up and see almost the same view…
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the fairy tree dwellers…
Part of The Fairies Tree in Fitzroy Gardens, carved in the early 1930s by sculptor Ola Cohn {1892-1964} as a gift to the children of Melbourne. Though my own childhood is distant, I found myself rushing through the gardens to find it. And while there were plenty of beautifully carved tree folk to capture, I was taken by this little group hiding in a notch near the base of the trunk, and especially like the owl.
Afterwards, I read, “A Way with the Fairies”, Ola Cohn’s autobiography, and it was interesting to learn more of this Australian sculptor and philanthropist. For many female artists of a certain era, sadly, their work did not always receive all the recognition it may have merited.
A gift to the children of Melbourne…
“I have carved a tree in the Fitzroy Gardens for you and the fairies, but mostly for the fairies and those who believe in them. For they will understand how necessary it is to have a fairy sanctuary – a place that is sacred and safe as a home should be to all living creatures.” Ola Cohn
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Mercers Lane Mosaic…
A beautiful, mosaic artwork is emerging along Mercers Lane in Ingham, Queensland to commemorate the history of the local sugarcane industry. Really inspiring to discover around 2000 local volunteers and tourists so far have taken part in creating the mosaic and it’s wonderful to see local history recorded in art like this, particularly all the different cultures that have been a part.
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Official opening of Anzac Square, Brisbane…
Official opening of Anzac Square in Brisbane on 25th April, 1930 (taken from Ann St looking towards Adelaide St).
– image courtesy State Library, Qld.
{For those familiar with the Astoria Café in Joe’s Fruit Shop and Milk Bar, this building can be seen in the far right of the photograph.}
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one-pot cooking…
… ‘meat and veg Italian-style’ – polpette, melanzane e piselli in passata con due formaggi – meatballs, eggplant and peas in passata with two cheeses.
{Yes, there are vegies in there – under the cheese…}
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a seat by the cove…

— Farm Cove, Royal Botanic Gardens
So lovely that whenever in Sydney, despite the hectic traffic and millions of people, it is still always possible to find an empty seat to watch the harbour…
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‘Sali e Tabacchi’…
This sign might be familiar to those who have bought a bus or lottery ticket, tobacco or, until recent years, salt in Italy. Yes, the traditional ‘Sali e Tabacchi’ or ‘Salt and Tobacco’ shop was for a long time the only place to buy salt while it remained a monopoly of the state, (a nod perhaps to ancient times when salt was worth as much as gold!)
However, we took this photo in Australia, not Italy, after spotting the sign hidden along a Melbourne laneway. Another little bit of Italy in the hearts of those in Australia. Looking forward to heading back to Melbourne again in March!
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vino e formaggio…
Fossa house, Abruzzo, a decade ago… pecorino cheese made by two women on a farm down in the valley, olives from the L’Aquila market, cerasuolo wine from a nearby vineyard, the paisley tablecloth Nanna Francesca purchased from a travelling merchant who drove from village to village in his small truck full of wares, an Italian folk song blaring from speakers to notify buyers he had arrived.
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Italian street painting in Sydney…
Giuseppe, aka Pepe, is a Madonnaro whom we came across by the harbour at Circular Quay in Sydney. Since the 16th century, Madonnari from Puglia in Italy’s south have been itinerant artists who originally went to cities to work on the cathedrals and when the job was done found a way to make a living by recreating paintings from the church on the pavement. Aware of festivals and holy days in each town, the Madonnari would travel to different provinces throughout Italy to eke out a living from observers who would throw coins if they approved of the work. Pepe explained he makes a living based solely on donations and never sells his paintings. Once they are completed, he gives them away to charitable organisations that then raise money by auctioning his paintings. His most recent work sold for $16,000.
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the Book House…
Happened across this gorgeous Little Free Library in Maple Street, Maleny where you can leave a book and swap it for another. Such a lovely idea. I’m definitely going to take a couple of books to leave there next time…
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un piccolo pezzo di paradiso…
Along the Hermitage Foreshore track in Sydney Harbour National Park a couple of Sunday mornings ago…. absolute magic!
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café Katoomba…
I cannot visit Katoomba in the Blue Mountains without going to the Paragon Café. Said to be the oldest café in Australia – trading since 1916 – it has retained its art deco, Greek café form since 1926 and still has its milk bar!
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Rosen in Deutschland…
Spring in Australia starts today {although the equinox is a few weeks off yet}. I wish I’d grown these myself but I took this picture during the northern hemisphere’s spring – in Beutelsbach, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, where I was doing research for a future book. It seemed every window box and garden were growing beautiful red flowers.
After the storm…
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Piano accordion orchestra
For the first time, we recently saw a piano accordion orchestra concert. It was great, some of the music taking me back to attending those big Italian weddings when I was a child and also our family gatherings when my uncle sometimes played the piano accordion. Of course, there were a couple of classics played, including Volare and Funiculi Funicula.
{Photograph courtesy of Germaine Arnold: http://deptford.tumblr.com/}
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Restoration…
On a bleak, wintry day, the caretakers gave us the opportunity to explore this abandoned, sandstone house in south west Queensland. As we walked through the high ceilinged rooms, the wind whistled through cracks in the walls and I longed to find out all the stories it held. After many decades of dereliction it is now being restored. http://www.glengallan.org.au/
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Katoomba magic…
I can’t take credit for the cockatoo in flight, it just happened to appear as I clicked the camera.
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a little bit of Italiana…
Anyone with Sicilian connections or who have been to Sicily may recognise this doll in folk costume (right) and the decorated cart, carrello or carrozza…
Came across the display as part of an Italian migrant exhibition at the Commissariat Store Museum in Brisbane.
Along with some bomboniere… (below) familiar to Italian weddings, christenings and communions.
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the old macaroni factory…
The Lucini macaroni factory (circa 1859) is said to be the oldest building in Australia built by Italian-Australians. There are 150-year-old frescoes inside that unfortunately remained hidden as it was closed the day we came by. Sitting in the main street of Hepburn Springs in Victoria, the building was also the location for Jan Sardi’s film, Love’s Brother, about two Italian brothers in Australia and a proxy marriage to a girl in Italy.
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art in nature…
View from the Tweed Regional Gallery in Murwillumbah, New South Wales, Australia where we recently went to see the new Margaret Olley Art Centre housing rooms from her Sydney terrace house, her artworks, and exhibitions by other artists. This view from the café was like an artwork in itself.
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a lovely spot for lunch…
Lavandula – the Swiss Italian farm at Shepherds Flat not far from Hepburn Springs in Victoria, Australia. The air was filled with the scent from fields of lavender growing nearby and a friendly flock of geese (not on the menu!) kept us company.
http://www.lavandula.com.au/
Filed under garden + vintage linens, inspiration + history
the little world of Don Camillo…
Came across this bio for Italian author, Giovannino Guareschi in one of my father’s original copies of the Don Camillo books published in the 1950s, and loved it.
After my grandfather and my father, I’m now the third generation to be reading these sixty-year-old copies and treasure every yellowed page.
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il Corno in Caserta…
…this 13-metre high sculpture of the ancient amulet,
il Corno (to protect against the evil eye)
appeared in the middle of one night to gain attention regarding
the deterioration of the world heritage listed Palazzo Reale in Caserta,
and has since been creating some heated debate.
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Italian paper dolls…
I couldn’t resist this Italian paper doll book with regional costumes from all over Italy. Sofia and Ernesto are the names of the two paper dolls that come with it. I admit I haven’t come across paper dolls since playing with a 1960s set owned by one of my relatives a very long time ago in childhood. I think it was American and being from the sixties, the paper clothes it in were very groovy.
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Togetherness and separateness within la famiglia…
…this family from le Marche were photographed by Mario Giacomelli during time he spent with them between 1964 and 1966 for his series, la buona terra – the good earth, in which his aim was to capture the story of work, of life, throughout the revolving seasons, and endlessly repeated throughout a lifetime.
Related article: Priests dancing in the snow
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“Dolcetto o scherzetto” ~ trick or treat
as night falls, the children may call…
{vintage paper cut – ‘if these walls could talk’}
…vigilia d’ognissanti ~ eve of all saints ~ halloween…
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‘alla fontana’ ~ to the fountain…
The woman in the foreground carries two conche, the copper vessels traditionally used in Abruzzo to collect water from the village fountain for the household. Perhaps she was teaching the young girl to carry it back on her head (depicted by the women in the background). The village women used to do so to transport all manner of heavy things with evidence of this including iron bedheads and, on occasion in very steep areas, even coffins.
The artwork pictured here was painted in Civita d’Antino in Abruzzo by Danish painter, Kristian Zahrtmann (1843-1917) who first travelled to the mountain town of Civita d’Antino in June 1883. Zahrtmann came to consider it his second home as he was fascinated by “the life there, the strong Italian sun, the brightness of colours, and the exoticness of Catholic Church rites”.
He spent every summer from 1890 to 1911 in Civita d’Antino where he stayed with the Cerroni family, and was named an honorary citizen of the town in 1902. In Civita d’Antino, a memorial plaque to Zahrtmann is set into the wall of the Cerroni house near the town gate.
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Flight of the angel… il Volo dell’Angelo
Il Volo dell’Angelo… {the flight of the angel} – something a little different to do in Italy – ‘flying’ between the villages of Pietrapertosa and Castelmezzano in the Dolomites of Lucania, Basilicata.
Apparently, you start 1020m above the ground with the flight covering 1415m and reaching speeds of up to 120 km/h. Not sure if I’m game!
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the art of birds…
“Birds don’t only use their beaks to build: they press their breasts against the inner wall to make it round, imprinting their shape on their home, an interior formed by the steady rhythm of their beating hearts.”
Janine Burke
from Nest: The Art of Birds
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Castrovillari, Calabria…


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Late afternoon walks…
a beautiful end to a Sunday, walking along Obi Obi Creek, Maleny…
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Castel del Monte, Abruzzo…
- Castel del Monte – “Fortress of the mountain”.
Castel del Monte, Abruzzo
- Evidence of the site first inhabited as early as the 11th century BC.
- Visited and painted by artist and folklorist, Estella Canziani in 1913.
- Birthplace of a distant cousin I was pleased to meet the last time I was in Italy.
- Location where George Clooney was filmed in, “The American”.
- In mid-August the town hosts the annual event, La Notte delle Streghe – The Night of the Witches, a late-night spectacle I really hope to see in the future.

Castel del Monte by Estella Canziani, 1913
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Giro d’Italia…
It’s ‘Giro time’ again in Italy at the moment. {4-26 May, 2013}
Took this photo near the finish line of the leg of the bike race that ended in L’Aquila in 2005. Hours of waiting… seconds of cyclists rushing past…
The winner of this leg was Italian rider, Danilo di Luca {from the Abruzzo}. He rode the 229 km stage from Frosinone to L’Aquila in 6 hrs, 1 min. Waiting in the crowd was quite an experience! {p.197 Mezza Italiana}
Hotel open for bees…
… and also ladybirds, lacewings and other garden friends.
Filed under garden + vintage linens
Litografia di Maurits Cornelis Escher…
Goriano Sicoli, Abruzzi, 1929, by M.C. Escher (1898-1972), a Dutch graphic artist known for his woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints.
After finishing school, he traveled extensively in Italy, where he met his wife Jetta Umiker. They lived in Rome from 1924 until 1935, during which time Escher travelled throughout Italy, drawing and sketching for the various prints he would make when he returned home.
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a beautiful place to sit and read, or lie and daydream…
Painted by Estella Canziani (1887-1964) who wrote {as well as drew and painted the illustrations for} one of my favourite books on the Abruzzo about her 1913 travels – Through the Apennines & Lands of Abruzzi.
She painted this picture {oil on paper} from inside her house in London at 3 Palace Green in 1922. The white bird in the painting one of the many birds she rescued and cared for.
Filed under art + photographs, books + writing, inspiration + history
Maremma sheepdogs and penguins…
The Maremma Sheepdog is indigenous to central Italy, particularly Abruzzo and the Maremma area in Tuscany and Lazio, and has been used for centuries by Italian shepherds to guard sheep from wolves.
Recently I discovered a project in Australia where Maremma Sheepdogs are protecting a penguin colony almost decimated by foxes, and under their protection the penguins are increasing in numbers. {The dogs also guard free-range chickens.} A little mezza italiana/ australiana perhaps.
Filed under inspiration + history, italy
little free libraries…
Love this concept of the ‘Little Free Library’ – “take a book, leave a book” structures built with recycled materials and popping up beside footpaths, coffee shops, houses and parks around the world….
http://www.littlefreelibrary.org/
Filed under books + writing, inspiration + history
Popes, murder and Dante…

{Il Portale. Watercolour by Juan Alfredo Parisse.}
It was unexpected to hear of Pope Celestino V {1294} being spoken of in the media until I heard it was in relation to the decision by Pope Benedict XVI to resign. Celestino aka Pietro del Morrone, a hermit monk who lived in caves in the Abruzzo’s mountains, instigated the building of the Santa Maria di Collemaggio cathedral in L’Aquila (pictured), where he was crowned Pope in front of a crowd of 100,000, including Dante who referred to him in his epic poem, Inferno.
It’s thought the naive Celestine was chosen as a stooge for those in Vatican politics, and when he abdicated in 1294 after just five months, the next Pope, Boniface, took umbrage, and imprisoned him. Celestino was found dead in his cell with a nail-sized hole in his skull, alleged to have been murdered by Pope Boniface.
Filed under italy
The beauty of walking in Italy…
…a fleeting glimpse down a narrow, side alley often reveals the unexpected and the beautiful. 
{Taken in Orvieto, Umbria.}
Filed under art + photographs, inspiration + history, italy
Lightly, lightly….

Life Behind by Maki Horanai
“It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. I was so preposterously serious in those days…Lightly, lightly—it’s the best advice ever given me. So throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly, my darling.”
Aldous Huxley
From ‘Island’, 1962
Related articles: Watching Over
Filed under art + photographs, books + writing, inspiration + history
Neve in Roccacaramanico…
I grew up with stories of villages in the Abruzzo being snowed in, sometimes the snow so high people couldn’t open the doors and had to climb out their windows. Hearing this in the heat of a subtropical summer in Australia, I could only try to imagine….
{Neve in Roccacaramanico. Photographer: Andrea Basciano.}
Filed under inspiration + history, italy
Italia at night…
….taken from the International Space Station above the Mediterranean Sea on 18 August 2012.
{The lights of Rome and Naples are clearly visible on the coast near the centre.}
{Courtesy Sir Thomas Brisbane Planetarium, Australia.}
Filed under art + photographs, inspiration + history, italy