Nationality Is Too Complicated, I'm Just a Melbourne Girl

Greetings from Melbourne, Australia!

Yes, I am home… Just for four weeks. It was a surprise for my family and friends. Since Sal didn’t end up coming for our planned six-week trip, I had some spare time on my hands and a very generous offer from my step-dad to be flown home for a visit.

It’s been really wonderful catching up with everyone. It’s strange, but it doesn’t feel like I’ve been away for nearly five months. The only things that reminded me I was gone were my bedroom, which was filled with bathroom renovation junk, and the fact that I tend to respond to my little brother and sister in Italian when they wake me up too early in the morning!

Now the great thing about being home, besides seeing loved ones, is that I get to visit all my favourite Melbourne spots. There are plenty of valid reasons why this place has won “The World’s Most Liveable City Award” twice, but my favourite thing about it is that Melbourne is a city of cached richness and character.

When you arrive in Melbourne, you are not greeted with mind-boggling history (like, for example, Rome), iconic landmarks (Sydney), or the sense that you have exited reality and landed on the set of every Hollywood film ever made (Los Angeles and New York). However, if you look closely, you will find a wealth of tucked-away culinary institutions, creative coffee houses, quirky clothing stores, beckoning bookstores, outbursts of spontaneous off-beat street art (like a stack of shoes hanging from lines in a tiny alley), and a hundred little laneways packed with every intriguing thing you can imagine. Yep, I’ll say it again: I love my city.

Compared to Europe, it may seem young and un-tested, but the other day, I had a thought about that… I was driving through Carlton (my favourite place in the world – and not just because I was born there!) and I realised that Melbourne has got character and authenticity like nowhere else. It doesn’t offer what most European cities do. It has no ancient history, breath-taking views, traditional cuisine or robust cultural heritage to lure you. Melbourne is for the curious; for the inquirers; for the ones who are willing to get under its skin, inject themselves into its vessels and course through its veins. And as we all know... veins lead to hearts.

When I was younger, all I could think about was going overseas and seeing all the cities I’d spent my spare time reading about; but over the past few years I really fell in love with this town.

When it comes to nationality, I’ll be honest with you; I am so mixed-up that sometimes I don’t feel like I am particularly anything. This is a common consequence of colonisation and immigration! Of course I am Australian, but then, when people look at me, they always ask, “Yeah, but what’s your background?” That leads to a complicated history lesson on just how my family came together from all over the place to create me. It makes it difficult to identify with any one national heritage. But at the end of the day, if someone needs to know where I’m from, the most accurate statement I can make – and one I always make with pleasure – is that I am a Melbourne girl.

Recommended Reading – The Melbourne: A History of Now by Maree Coote (This book is more interesting than it sounds! It’s got cool pictures and eccentric stories)