New ways of learning are a very important part of living in a new country, not only Australia. Learning the language is the absolute number one important thing you must do, because then and only then can you learn all you need to get all the best out of life.

Being away from the family back home is difficult but personally I had no family. However, for my wife it was very painful to live beyond the touch and easy contact of her mother, sisters and brothers. Also she did not know if she would ever go back, and there are other things apart from family members you miss.

For me it’s not being around the places where you were born and grew up. You only have memories of your childhood, school days and all the other pieces of your past, and it is hard for you because it is often difficult to return to your homeland maybe because of money or other reasons.

Making friends, (I mean real friends), is most difficult. Sometimes people make friends too easily only realising after a while that those supposed friends are criticising you behind your back. This can be true if you are a native born person, but I think it is even worse when this happens when you are a migrant because you depend on new contacts so much to help you live more easily in a strange place. Meeting people from your own country is more pleasant than important. When I meet people from Italy it is the curiosity that is interesting for me, what part of Italy they come from, what they used to do etc.

Communicating ideas with somebody is a difficult task sometimes as you may have different ways of thinking. This can be complicated when the people concerned are from different cultures. So I consider it important to improve the skills of mutual communication.

Adjusting to new customs is certainly important when you move to a new country because you are faced with totally different ways of doing things. Customs are culturally worked out and what is normal behaviour in your country might be offensive in your new country.

Learning them must be a target to be reached and I have found the different social customs quite important to learn. For instance, in Italy we had more time to meet with friends after work, to discuss and exchange points of view on many matters. In Australia, normally after work we go home to do many family things we need to do around the home. Also knowing what to do in everyday situations is extremely important, and sometimes difficult. On many occasions, especially during the first period in Australia when we needed suggestions from local people which I always found very helpful.

Food is one of the fundamentals things in life and my family and I found the food very different to the food we were used to at home, but we continued to prepare our food in the same way. We came here in 1955 and we have noticed that as the years have passed, many Australians now prepare Italian food using our traditional ways that they have learnt.

Differences in the weather between my native country, Italy, and Australia was not so difficult for my family and me because when we came here we were prepared for any kind of weather. This was because we didn’t know too much about Australia so we packed many clothes. Problems with the weather depends on where you come from and how much you can learn and the time you have to prepare.

Transport has always been easy for me here, I have not found any problems with transport, but I know others who have found it difficult learning new system. Apart from the fact that distances are greater here and that it is probably a necessity that you drive a car, it is quite easy to move around.

The media is part of our modern lives and it is relatively important to read newspapers and magazines from home. While this is interesting, it becomes less and less important as time goes by. Also, nowadays there is so much media here, with news on television from all around the world like SBS and the ABC. Also there are many newspapers and radio programs in different languages available here which is a very good thing.

When I came to Australia I found life was very hard for the first twelve months. The language barrier was the worst part, followed by the financial situation we were in. We lived in a shared household and it was difficult to adapt to sharing a kitchen, a bathroom, a toilet with many others was depressing.

But after eighteen months we were able to save some money and buy a block of land, to one day build our own house. It was on that particular day when I signed the contract of sale that I said to my wife, "We are only in Australia for eighteen months and we have been able to buy a block of land that is OURS!"

This was the spirit many migrants had which was to start a new life in this beautiful country with a great future.