ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the role of the physical form of housing in the process of settlement of ten migrants from Italy in various suburbs of Melbourne. During the nineteenth century, there was a small but steady flow of Italian immigrants to Australia. The chapter presents the physical Italian presence in Melbourne, and explores two types of houses, the past house in Italy and the current house in Melbourne. The young age of the migrants when migrating to Australia explain the nostalgic manner and positive memories regarding their former housing in Italy. Past houses were described as built with real stones and not brick veneer like Australian post-war houses, is seen in migrant Lorenzo's and Bruno's photographs of past houses. The kitchen is often mentioned in scholarly accounts as the locus of migrant women's home-building practices. A significant part of home-building practices was the construction of a garden that reminded participants of their childhood farms, as others have found.
