We left a country of magnificent mountains and the sea and came to a place of heat, dust, tin houses and toilets. It was a big shock for us!
Rudolph Alagich OAM

When I was a child in Italy, we had a shack in the mountains; it was the stable for the cows and chooks. I remember when I was very young there was one particular cow that was mine to take to drink. They grazed on one side and drank on the other side.
Dina Spagnol

I grew up in South Africa during the apartheid years. I saw a lot of injustices.
Adelaide De Main

Italo and I were in orphanages for eight years. I went in when I was six and I came out when I was fourteen, to come to Australia.
Silvana Michl

We were starving at that orphanage. I remember going out to the garden with the boys and collecting snails; scraping them out of the shells with a bit of wire and heating them over the drum of rubbish and eating them.
Italo Martini

We came from the northern part of Norway and the winter over there was very hard: snowing began in
October; storms and snow and frost and long hard winters. I don't miss that.
Dagmar Kanck

My grandfather Emanuel Pedergnana was born in San Bernardo, Rabbi Tyrol, Italy on 11th November 1883. That region of Italy was under Austrian rule until after the First World War.
Reginald (Reg) Pedergnana

After World War Two, the whole of industry in Italy was migrating; originally to Switzerland, France, Belgium and then Australia.
John De Franceschi

During the war, the German command in Italy was based in our town. We were bombed from all sides. Our town was bombed every day because the highway came from Milano to Trieste and we had the river there. The Americans destroyed the bridges and then the German or Italian troops worked through the night to rebuild the bridges; the trains would go along and the planes would come again. That went on for about three years; no let-up.
Luigi Zanette

In Yugoslavia we were working on a farm and my husband was a blacksmith. The work on the farm was very hard.
Margarita Sulicich

The surname Dal Santo is an ordinary name, common to the North of Italy around the Vincenza area and in particular in the township of Caltrano.
Clara Dal Santo

Greece was spoiled for many years after the Second World War; the economy was in ruin and there was a lot of unemployment. It was not a very easy life at that time because our country was so poor.
Veatrike (Vickie) Drosos

My father, Joze (Joe) Ravlich was a soldier in the Army. He fought for Yugoslavia to become united and in my heart I am a Yugoslav — that is the best way I can describe it.
Olga De Franceschi

We actually came from the Campagnia district of Italy. Campagnia was mostly mountains and hills and scrubby grounds; utterly different to what poor old mum faced in Broken Hill.
Anna Murphy

Italy was not a good place to be during the Second World War. I remember our father pushing us out of the way so we wouldn't get hit as airplanes shot at Germans!
Jack De Franceschi