The Year 10 Italian class visited Fremantle on Friday 3 March.
More than one third of Western Australia’s population was born overseas so, fittingly, students commenced their excursion at the Western Australian Maritime Museum.
The Museum is symbolic of Fremantle’s past, present and future and contains the Immigration Collection that documents maritime immigration into Western Australia.
After the self-guided Walking Trail tour outside the Museum, students explored Fremantle and read stories of migrations and discussed challenges and successes from these stories.
Students walked to Ristorante La Sosta, where Matteo Musetti and his staff cooked an authentic Italian lunch.
The excursion concluded with Italian gelato at Swan River Gelato – with everyone agreeing that it was a brilliant day!
"I always enjoy my Italian excursions because they are all fun and interesting. I especially enjoyed my last excursion because I was able to learn more about Italian immigrants and how they had to live a new life in Australia. We explored many things, but what I found the most interesting was the food during the excursion and the personal stories of some Italian migrants. I found the food given at the restaurant, "La Sosta", very delicious because it was unique and it was something that I had never tried before. I also found the personal stories of Italian migrants interesting because they were very emotional and it went into depth about how tough it was to move to a foreign country with vast land and little to no opportunities than what they were promised. Overall, it was a fun excursion and I look forward to the next one!"
I loved the Italian excursion to Fremantle.!!! During this experience I learned so much about Italian migrants. I also learned about what conditions my own grandparents would have sustained on their arrival to Australia. Once we arrived at the museum I looked for my grandparent's names on the walls where every single person's last name and first name were written in remembrance of the journey they encountered.
The Italian team all had an amazing day at the Fremantle Maritime Museum exhibiting a splendid day with each other exploring throughout the different stories of immigrants from Italy over a large time frame. Immigration stories varied from young kids at ages of 15 to grown adults who couldn’t understand English and leaving behind an entire family. Furthermore, the tour was accompanied by a delicious lunch at the ‘La Sosta’ restaurant close by. Followed by some mouth-watering gelato! Overall, we all spent a fabulous day expanding our knowledge on the ‘Italian Immigration Era’.
Our excursion to Fremantle helped us understand the struggle and surprise of the immigrants from Italy, It showed us what they came to with the treatment and unknowing-ness of it all. It was really fun to look at the welcome walls and read about their stories with classmates. I enjoyed the Italian cuisine that came with it.
