Like Penelope Green in the famous novel "When in Rome", Michelle Di Pietro leaves everything, career, home, family and friends to chase the infamous Italian dream and finally live the "dolce vita". (Photo Courtesy of Michelle Di Pietro)

I was recently asked to do the courtesy of driving an elderly Italian-born gentleman to an appointment some 13 kilometers from where he lives. It was meant to be an easy task: we were to merely drop off one item and pick another, he navigated while I drove, and the round trip should not have taken much more than a half hour, even in heavy traffic. Alas, the whole trip took a lot longer than anticipated. (Photo Wide Shut Photography)

Melbourne businesswoman and philanthropist Susan Alberti is not Italian, but she delights in being mistaken for a native speaker. ‘I feel good when I speak in Italian and they respond, and they think I’m Italian. That’s how you know you’re doing it right’, she says.

Life sometimes is more creative than your dreams. For sure Arnie Pizzini couldn’t even imagine what his father’s property would have become in time, but he had an intuition.

She has a warm smile, curious blue eyes and she walks as though she’s gliding gently over the floor. Years have passed since she was last on a catwalk, but it seems that hers is a gait you never lose.

A lot has been written about post-war immigrants and their quest to build a new life in an unfamiliar and remote land as Australia still was in the middle of the last century. Little account has been given of their children’s experiences as they grew up torn between two cultures, wrestling with society’s push to mainstream or marginalize them.

There are many stories of Italian migrants who came to Australia with nothing more than a suitcase and were able to achieve great success in their business undertakings: stories of hard work, endurance, determination and, in some cases, extraordinary fortitude in the face of dire circumstances.