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![Delfina, left, and with her then fiance Ciro in Italy just over a year before they left for Australia. Pictures supplied Delfina, left, and with her then fiance Ciro in Italy just over a year before they left for Australia. Pictures supplied](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/3BUUzmFAhrhLyX9rFCubPq5/25485d4f-1da6-4720-90f0-f273479b2015.jpg/r0_0_1920_1079_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
She doesn't care how big this ship is. It might as well be a fiammifero, a matchstick. She feels each wave lashing its steel skin. Its iron rivets, straining against the heaving Atlantic swell, sound like thousands of grinding teeth. Her stomach churns. To think her husband, that marito stupido, vowed it would be easy.
She rolls her eyes. Gli uomini possono essere idioti. Men can be idiots.
This small, bird-like woman, swaying unsteadily on the deck of this ship of migrants, fighting the urge to throw up again, is cradling a six-month-old baby girl who will one day become my wife. She's also pregnant again, making her nausea worse. Ciro, that husband who persuaded her to undertake this voyage, knows he is in her bad books. He urges her to eat more. Delfina, devi mangiare, he says. But black coffee and licorice is all she can keep down.
It's 1968. My mother-in-law, Delfina, is on her way to Australia; nervous, homesick, fearful of the outside world and her future. Try telling her that in 50 years she will be famous in that peculiar 21st century way, that hundreds of thousands of fans around the globe will cling to her words, follow her recipes, laugh along with her mangled English and wish they had a nonna like her. Another eye roll. Ridicolo.
Family lore says the blood of witches runs in her veins. Stubbornness certainly does. She comes from Guardia Sanframondi, a small mediaeval town doused in superstition that has clung to the slopes of a southern Italian mountain for a thousand years. Her father plunged daggers into the dry soil of his small farm to end droughts and threw ash over his shoulder to ward off hail - and the devil.
Delfina's mother died when she was four. At 12 she left school and lugged 20kg bags of flour up steep hills. Turned it into pasta and bread for the family. Simmered oceans of tomato sauce on a primitive wood stove. Gathered baskets of mushrooms beneath conifers and old oaks in woods scented with pine and wild rosemary.
Food and all its flavours and aromas - the comfort blanket for so many immigrants. Delfina and Ciro settle in Australia, raise their family, work hard, try to fit in by swapping anchovy and salami lunches for plastic cheese and sour vegemite, ignore the insults - bloody wogs, greasy dagos - and turn their backyard into a time machine where food tastes like it did generations ago, where ripe tomatoes burst with sweetness and it's no sin to let the seeds and juice spill down your chin.
Delfina learns to embrace this new world. But just when her daughters have been married off and grandchildren have arrived and retirement looms, cancer claims Ciro. Ti lascio, he whispers weakly to her in the hospital. Mi dispiace. I'm leaving you. I'm sorry.
What is she supposed to do now? She works harder, often in a sleepless frenzy, trying to fill the void and blunt the anger triggered by his loss. Cooks enough to feed villages. Helps raise the grandkids. Learns to mow lawns and fix leaking taps. Obsessively cleans the house she and Ciro saved so long to build. But nothing inside it - niente - can be altered or thrown out. That would mean losing more of the man who lured her on to that ship and then, ever so patiently, helped her overcome her fears.
And then one day her eldest grandchild, Madeleine, begins secretly filming her Nonna. Videos appear on TikTok and Instagram. Word spreads quickly.
People laugh when Delfina calls her air fryer a "hair fryer".
Did you know she bought her High Pad from High Five (an iPad from JB Hi-FI)?
Or that she gets her groceries from Woolaworts and Eager (IGA)?
The handle @mynonnafina becomes a thing. Delfina goes viral. Now there are hundreds of thousands of followers. Tens of millions of "likes". They message her from New York and London and - best of all - Guardia Sanframondi.
![Delfina now there has hundreds of thousands of followers. Picture supplied Delfina now there has hundreds of thousands of followers. Picture supplied](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/3BUUzmFAhrhLyX9rFCubPq5/907ad269-9cbc-4a6e-a28a-c5eeb7f0baf1.jpg/r0_381_2016_1514_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
She swaggers her way through morning television shows, upstaging hosts, warning viewers not to add much "salty" to their zucchini parmigiana. Advertisers want her to wear their clothes and cook with their products.
Look at her now. That gap left by her husband will never be filled. But see how confident she is. She's 76 turning 50. Strangers approach her in the street. Invite her into their homes.
Ciro was right all along. Why be frightened of that outside world?
It came to her with open arms instead.
HAVE YOUR SAY: What was your experience with Australia's wave of Italian immigrants? How do you think they influenced our culture? Should we increase our migrant intake given our current shortage of workers? Email us: echidna@theechidna.com.au
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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:
- The unemployment rate lifted to 3.7 per cent in January, with 11,500 jobs lost from the economy. The participation rate fell 0.1 percentage point to 66.5 per cent as per Australian Bureau of Statistics jobs data for the month of January. "With employment decreasing by around 11,000 people, and the number of unemployed increasing by 22,000 people, the unemployment rate rose to 3.7 per cent," ABS head of labour statistics Bjorn Jarvis said.
- Australia's chief medical officer has stressed the COVID-19 pandemic is still underway, predicting "another couple" of COVID-19 waves throughout the year, as well as a "long tail" that will impact the nation. Professor Paul Kelly has told Senate estimates there had been a "number of waves" in Australia in the last 12 to 14 months with the Omicron variant.
- A brand of almond milk is being recalled in NSW after it was linked to a case of potentially life-threatening botulism. Inside Out Unsweetened Almond Milk with a use-by date of March 1 was being sold at Woolworths in NSW. NSW Health said initial investigations confirmed the presence of botulinum toxin in a sample of the milk.
THEY SAID IT: "Non si puo mai attraversare I'oceano se non si ha il coraggio di perdere di vista la riva." You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore. - Christopher Columbus
YOU SAID IT: RBA governor Philip Lowe won't win any popularity contest right now. But his job requires tough decisions that affect millions of Australians.
Brian says: "He has been copping unfair flak at a very difficult economic time nationally and globally. This not only from the media but the government is happy for him to take the flak and take pressure off them. Commercial banks have much to answer for when offering huge home loans to people with minimal deposits in the knowledge that interest rates would go up at some stage. I well remember when interest rates were at 18 per cent and we were required to have at least a 25 per cent deposit on a house purchase."
John has sympathy for the RBA boss: "So many experts, including even politicians, who know how to do Dr Lowe's job better than he does, and who have never made a mistake."
Likewise, Christine: "Thanks for inviting comment on the RBA governor, Philip Lowe. I think any RBA governor has a benign job when the economy is going well. However, when mechanisms employed by the RBA in times such as now directly impact on the lives of individual Australians the governor becomes an obvious whipping boy for frustrations. And, he is not a solo decision maker. There are nine members of the board of the RBA and one assumes decisions are by consensus or majority. No one likes delivering bad news and I am sure the RBA does not relish having to pull the only lever it has available to it. I have a great deal of sympathy for Dr Lowe."
Alistair says: "On the subject of whether interest rate rises are the best way to curb inflation, I recently read an article, that referred to an idea of Milton Keynes, no less, that instead of restricting a large amount of the incomes, effectively only of people who have a mortgage, an appropriate amount of income should be corralled into compulsory savings (probably super), where it of course could not be touched till inflation was overcome. Seemed a good idea to me. Win, win."
Alan wonders about other means to fight inflation: "I agree that playing the person and not the ball is awfully bad form. However what disappoints me more is that the weapons used currently to fight inflation are inequitable and little attention has so far been paid by the media and governments to alternatives that more equitably 'share the costs' of that battle. Some of those solutions have been thought of as far back as a century ago."
Erik is unimpressed with Dr Lowe's appearance at Senate estimates: "I thought he was like a little boy caught out in doing something bad and trying to joke and laugh his way out of trouble. I don't have a mortgage so the rises benefit me but I think his performance was very telling: smug was the word that came to mind."
Michael says: "Philip Lowe is doing his job in accordance with the legislation that set up and controls the RBA. If he didn't do this, he would be guilty of slackness or avoiding the issue at the very least. Increasing GST temporarily might be a better way of achieving the same end. The government of the day would then be responsible. Basic food, medical and education costs should be exempt, with higher GST on gambling, alcohol, huge SUVs and urban tractors, and other unnecessary luxury items might be a start."