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’. 💛
On the kitchen table today… pickings from the garden – ginger flowers, white periwinkles that self-sowed in a cement crack, a spotted blackberry lily from a lovely friend’s cutting, a native, blue flax lily, the bleeding heart (was one of Grandma Lorna’s favourites), tiny, yellow flowers from bok choy gone to seed, even a cobbler’s peg flower. 
Thank you for joining me here throughout the year – for your wonderful interest in and support of my books and for sharing your own experiences and memories with me.
It was actually Nonno Anni who originally gave me the idea for, The Proxy Bride. When I was talking to him about his life for Joe’s, he mentioned by chance that during WW2 when he and other Italian men were taken from farms around Stanthorpe and sent to internment camps, the women and children suddenly left alone did it very tough. He later heard they were given no assistance and with curfews and restrictions weren’t allowed to drive, many didn’t know how to use the farm equipment or ride a horse and faced poverty and starvation. He mentioned this group of women who banded together to keep their farms going. That really struck me and I felt I’d come back and write about it. When I learnt that some of these women were also proxy brides, it opened up more to the story.
On the kitchen table today… a friend’s home-grown lemons and mandarins on one of Nanna Francesca’s 1950s dinner plates. So lovely when someone brings you fruit and flowers they’ve grown in their garden. To me they’re the perfect gifts. (And the fresh, crisp lemon scent currently in the kitchen is divine!) 🍋
Zoe xx
My House, My Truth, 1989 by Mariya Prymachenko (1909-1997). “My house, my truth… my mother did it all and gave me. She sewed, spun, baked bread and pounded millet.” Mariya Prymachenko.
“In 1939, Giacinta sets sail from Italy to Australia. Decades later, a granddaughter discovers the true story of her family… A stunningly crafted novel of family, secrets and facing adversity.
If you have any link to Abruzzo, I warn that this footage may be hard to watch as those filming go right into the most intimate parts of homes, which may just happen to be yours or of someone you know. That said, the young men filming have done so with respect, have only entered houses where the doors were already open and have concealed the name and whereabouts of the village. (Considering my own family’s house is one of those looted since the earthquake, I appreciate this.) By the end, they also appear to be overwhelmed by all they’ve seen.
Zoë Boccabella 