An incredible thing happened recently… I’m working on the next book, in particular, a part of it that’s an update on the internment camp Nonno Anni was in, when out-of-the-blue, I’m contacted by someone whose father was in the same camp. (The secret camp authorities said never existed, though any of us who had family in there know that’s not true.)
For privacy, I won’t say who contacted me but I’m so grateful as she also sent me photos I’ve never seen before from inside the camp, including of ‘Venice Street’ between their tents and also of Nonno Anni!
Then it struck me, here’s Nonno Anni aged nineteen, bottom right in the first photo holding up a forkful of pasta, and two decades on, there’s Dad aged nineteen, same position bottom right, also holding up pasta for a photo. (The same photo that’s on the cover of Mezza Italiana.)
What a difference twenty years after the camp made for Nonno Anni – married, a family, a house, a milk bar and fruit shop. And what a gift to discover more internment camp photos all these years after I wrote about it in, Joe’s Fruit Shop and Milk Bar. (It remains a mystery why or how photos were even taken inside the camp since by 1942 in WW2 cameras were confiscated from Italians in Australia. It seems the guards likely took them.)
Truly, the absolute best thing about writing is hearing from all of you and your own connections with these stories. Thank you. I better get back to work as I’m deep in the next book but I just had to share with you this little bit of ‘serendipity with spaghetti’. 💛
Thinking of all those who’ve served or been affected by war. And on this ANZAC day I wish to give tribute to those women who did it very tough on farms during WW2 to feed Australians as well as Australian, British and US troops. They faced often hazardous working conditions and unfamiliar machinery, animosity, little ready money and also many of the agricultural chemicals of the time had later effects on the women’s health.
Zoë Boccabella 