Welcome to My Backyard, Your Backyard.
This website celebrates the Italian-Australian backyard, preserving this history forever.
We, the Italian Social Welfare Organisation of Wollongong (ItSoWel) in partnership with Why Documentaries, have produced 4 stories on Australian-Italian Backyards in the Illawarra.
Have you ever seen an Italian-Australian Backyard? Have you wondered how they do it? With a lot of passion, gusto, love and hard work, that’s how!
We will show tomato day and how to make the best pasta sauce. We follow four sisters in one street who have gardens. We follow Fred and Frank. Frank is Italian born and Fred is Italian born, but Frank now speaks a little Italian and has his own Italian backyard. They share veggies and stories over the back fence and have done so for the last 50 years. This is our most loved story. We also have a love story between Anna and Alfonso who garden up to six hours a day everyday together. When you’ve seen their story, you will be inspired to start your own backyard garden. At the very least you will never look at your garden in the same way again!
The timeless energy and passion of the participants is touching. The pure expression exposed in this documentary shows there is so much more to life than we think. A simple way of living allows us time to reflect and connect with nature and the home life which once was.
This fresh look at traditional backyard gardens shows an integral part of our community, which is slowly diminishing, and how their lives are centered and were created in and around the garden. It extends to illustrate links to vitality, well-being and sustainability.
On the 7th November 2013, My Backyard Your Backyard won the National Multicultural Marketing Award for 2013!
Here are some photos from the Award night, Sharon Bird and Ryan Park’s visit to ItSoWel on 26 November 2013 and Victor Dominello’s visit on 4 December 2013
The 2013 National Multicultural Marketing Award
