There’s something about an Italian festival that just feels a bit like home for me.

Jodie will tease me about being more Croatian than Italian (with a huge dose of Skippy the kangaroo) but I don’t care. I’m proud of my immigrant background.

Maybe it was the smell of food drifting across Langley Park on the weekend. Maybe it was the noise (because there’s always noise). Or maybe it was the sight that stopped me in my tracks: a perfectly recreated Italian lounge room inside Nonna’s House.

And I mean perfectly.

The good furniture. The untouched furniture. The “don’t-you-dare-sit-on-that” furniture.

Covered in plastic, of course. There was even “The Last Supper” on the wall, a rotary phone, plus doilies everywhere.

It was like stepping straight back into my childhood.

And judging by the laughter around me, I wasn’t the only one.

Because if you grew up around Italian or Croatian or Greek families in WA, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

That lounge room wasn’t a collection of furniture. It was a symbol.

Respect. Pride. Sacrifice. And a reminder of where it all started.

Post-war Australia was built on the backs of migrants. Families who came here with very little. Italians escaping a war-torn homeland. Croatians on the run from Tito and communism.

They arrived in a country that was foreign in every sense. Different language. Different culture. Different everything.

But they didn’t complain. They worked hard. And they built something, not just for themselves but for the generations that followed.

It also hit close to home for me. My dad was born in Rome during the war, and my paternal grandmother came from Trieste, a place that, depending on when you looked at the map, wasn’t always Italy at all.

Borders shifted, identities blurred, and for many families arriving here in the 1950s, it must have been a confusing time. Even on my mum’s side, there were Italian roots, with family eventually settling in Merredin. Different stories, different journeys but all chasing the same thing: a better life, the Australian dream.

And somehow, through all that uncertainty, they built something incredibly certain for the rest of us.

You see it everywhere now. The sons and daughters of those migrants, successful, grounded, and fiercely proud of their heritage.

And rightly so. Because they know what came before them.

They know about the long days. The multiple jobs. The sacrifices made without fuss.

And they honour it, sometimes in the most uniquely Australian ways.

Like recreating a lounge room on Langley Park, with plastic still on the couch.

And the perfect person to bring that to life was Italian-Australian comedian Joe Avati, who was part of the festival.

No one tells those stories better. Not in a mocking way but in a loving, knowing way.

Because we’ve all lived it.

One of my favourite Avati lines, because it’s so true, is about Italian dads never letting their kids go on sleepovers:

“Sleepover? What’s wrong with your bed?”

That was it. End of discussion.

Then there were the goodbyes after Sunday visits.

Or what I like to call . . . the Italian exit.

You’d say goodbye once and somehow still be there 30 minutes later.

One more chat. One more story. One more “before you go . . .”

It wasn’t leaving, it was a process. A long, beautiful process.

And then there was the food; it’s always the food with the Italians.

Because food wasn’t just about eating. It was about family.

I also remember heading to the garage fridge (because every good migrant household had one) and spotting what I thought was a tub of Neapolitan ice-cream. Jackpot. Except it wasn’t ice-cream. It was tomatoes.

One of my favourite stories was about my Uncle Peter (real name Pietro).

His pride and joy was his car. It was an immaculate HR Holden and one day, it needed a service.

He asked me to find a mechanic in the teledex (remember those?)

So I go to “M” for mechanic . . . nothing.

Try “C” for car. Still nothing.

So I yelled out, “Uncle Peter, what letter is the mechanic under?”

Without missing a beat, he goes: “F.”

“F?”

“Yeah, F for fixa the car.”

And that’s what made the Perth Italian festival so special. Mr Accordion Man was there alongside 29,000 of his friends, celebrating culture but also celebrating identity.

Western Australia is better for it.

Stronger for it.

Richer for it. Not just economically but culturally, socially, emotionally.

These communities didn’t just fit in. They shaped who we are.

So when I saw that plastic-covered lounge room sitting there on Langley Park, I didn’t just see furniture.

I saw a brave new world. I saw history and sacrifice. I saw families building a new life from scratch. And I saw a generation now looking back with pride and a smile.

Sometimes the simplest things, a couch, a plate of gnocchi and a long goodbye, tell the biggest story of all.