Italia, a broken nation, regroups under ‘La Prima República’ assisted by the ‘Marshall Plan’. The Simonetti-Attisani families stitch together plans to scale up crops for economic survival.
Rebuilding Italia’s political structures must contend with remnants of the ‘Resistance Movement’ more concerned with settling internal feuds. The Monarchy loses a referendum, ushering in ‘The First Republic’. In the South, landowners and the Mafia resist change. Fascism is not expunged, and the legacy public service hierarchy remains. The Marshall Plan and cheap hydropower are a godsend to the reconstruction. The Simonetti–Attisani families’ economic survival depends on regrouping to create whatever income they can from their farms. The limited success leads Michele and Maria Concetta to decide on a plan to create wealth in America, but it was to be Australia. In 1956, Giuseppe is sent to join his father, by then already working in the Australian cane fields; he is just eight years old. Southern Italy is put under a social magnifying lens to provide a baseline comparison to Scottish comedian Billy Connolly, and to writers Lawson, Patterson, Dennis, and Rudd’s descriptors of the ‘boosh’ that lies in waiting for newcomers. Walking from Bonegilla to Cobram, Franz Vogel sees much of it firsthand. Michele, Pietro, and newly anointed ‘Joe’ experience the East Coast doing the itinerant shuffle between Mossman and Cobram.
