Stories and tales from people who have decided

to leave their country to live and work in Australia

and New Zealand + Pacific

 Pio Marasco, 40, neapolitan, fled Italy in search of the right location: one with sea and wind, infinite spaces, vast expanses of beach, and of the kind of waves the ‘beautiful country’, Italy, can’t offer. He found almost everything on Maui, the second largest island in Hawa...

 Why I escaped to New Zealand "My poor country!" I seem to hear Franco Battiato’s song when Gianpaolo Grazioli explains why he left Italy. Thirty-one, from Torre del Greco in the province of Naples, Gianpaolo has been in New Zealand for the last five. He couldn’t bear to l...

Cloris De Matteis is my “nome de plume”. I was born in 1943 from a prominent family in Stresa, a lovely picturesque town on the border of Lake Maggiore in the north of Italy. My childhood proved to be a loveless affair, having to endure real emotional hardship practically since birth, as...