La Nostra Storia: the story of Italians in Ballarat

Winner Cultural Diversity Award, 2019 Victorian Community History Awards

This award recognises the most outstanding project or publication that highlights the cultural diversity of Victoria.

The Ballarat Italian Institute commissioned Jan McGuinness, author and broadcaster, to write the story of Ballarat’s Italian community from the time of Raffaello Carboni and is gold-seeking compatriots. Personal stories based on more than 50 interviews, are deftly set in the context of causes for Italian migration: poverty and, above all, devastation cause by the Second World War. Italians from villages found provincial aspects of Ballarat appealing; working mostly in the food and construction industries, the enriched the local community with their culture and cuisine.

Clearly written and well documented, this attractive book reinforces Ballarat’s reputation as an intercultural city. It resembles a family album, replete with photographs of Italian village life, weddings in a new land, children and community gatherings.

La nostra storia weaves the stories of more than 50 individual settlement experiences into the 180-year growth and development of Ballarat. The focus is on the Italian migratory impact on this large, predominantly Anglo-Celtic community and of that community on the lives of the new arrivals.

Published by the Ballarat Italian Association

ISBN: 978 0 6483951 0 2

$65.00

1 in stock