I’ve always wanted to go to Italy.
So off I went in the Melbourne Spring, leaving my little green nook in Clifton Hill (waving my plane tickets) for a land I’ve only read of, to a different culture and one in which I can’t speak the language. The unknown!
As a young thing, my girlfriends dreamed of Paris and London, but my heart was set upon Italy. More specifically, the south of Italy.
At my Melbourne primary school in the early 1950s, lots of little children suddenly arrived, beautiful dark-eyed children from Calabria and Sicilia. I see them clearly in my memory, and I can hear them too, their voices rising in language like a song.
Ever since then, I’ve wanted a Summer in Sicily.
It’s not Summer but Autumn now, although you’d never guess it. Lovely balmy days with the temperature no higher than 28 C. It could be Melbourne!
Anyhow I’m here.
I’m learning the language, slowly, but with a lot of laughs, and finding my way around Siracusa.
I love Sicily!