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Mar 26,2006 - Apr 2,2006 |
18 - Italian emigrants thrive Down Under
Professionals and artists from all fields make culture and roots proud in Australia
By Antonio Maglio
Originally Published: 2002-11-24
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Australian-Italian journalist Marco Lucchi
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The fallout of 9/11 also reached Down Under, turning off some of the lights that the 2000 Olympic Games had turned on Australia. Take exotic tourism: people are travelling less and avoiding planes if at all possible. But Europeans and North Americans can only reach Australia in reasonable time by plane. Also, people's eyes reveal the same dispirited helplessness that can be found in every major capital, potential targets for an invisible enemy.
If the Olympic Games brought Australia as a whole on the front pages of newspapers all over the world, Sydney was the city that benefited most with new sport facilities, new road links, new hotels, better operation of its airports. A golden season was expected. Instead came the tragedy of the World Trade Centre, cooling the enthusiasm towards the Third Millennium.
This sunny city, crossed by the silver arrow of the monorail and overlooking a bay where dreams come naturally, did not lose its desire for the future, though. It's just holding it back, waiting for things to improve. Its sails are swollen, much like those built in concrete over the Opera House by Franco Belgiomo Nettis (an Apulian) and Carlo Saltieri, whose Transfield is Australia's biggest construction company, with subsidiaries in Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, and New Zealand. I cannot avoid linking this country's future to what Italians have done and will do for it.
People like Claudio Alcorso (from Rome), Giuseppe Bertinazzo (from Trieste) and Lamberto Furlan (from Rovigo), who became stars in classical music, or George Baldassin and Salvatore Zoffrea, who did likewise in figurative arts. Also, the Venetian dynasty of the Grollos, who erected Australia's most beautiful buildings, and Alessandra Pucci (a Florentine biologist) and Carla Zampatti (a fashion designer from Cuneo) who were named Businesswomen of the Year for 1999.
The Governor of the state of Victoria is Venetian-born Sir James Gobbo. In the Parliament of the same state sit Carlo Carli and Carlo Furletti, and in the Federal Parliament sit Concetto Sciacca, who was born in Sicily and immigrated as a child in 1951, John Barresi, and Venetian Teresa Gambaro, the first Italian-Australian woman to succeed in politics.
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