Lives Less Ordinary
The Sunday Age
Sunday February 24, 2002
AT a party in East Malvern last week, twin sisters Lydia Marcuzzi and Liliana del Porto celebrated their 70th birthday. A late summer breeze blew through the gum trees in the back yard where more than 60 guests - one husband, five children, grandchildren, old friends, neighbors - toasted the pair's long and eventful lives.
Summer in Melbourne - a very different backdrop to where they were born. In winter, 1932, in Skopje, Macedonia, the wife of the Italian consul-general gave birth to twin girls. The family was blessed - an older boy, Giorgio, a grand home with servants and a chauffeur. (``We each had our own wet nurse," recalls Lydia). Would those little girls have imagined that 70 years on they would be sharing laughs in a suburban Melbourne garden? ``We didn't even know where Australia was," says Liliana with a laugh.
In 1939, just before the outbreak of war, the twins' father died suddenly. With three small children, Mrs Marcuzzi returned to the home where she was born - Zara (now Zadar) in Croatia, on the Adriatic Sea. It was the start of a decade of uncertainty, moving from village to village, on to refugee camps then, in 1951, a boat trip to Australia.
Lydia, Liliana and their brother Giorgio, who was also at last week's party, were the asylum seekers of their generation. Unlike today's, they were welcomed and provided with opportunities to rebuild their lives. ``For the same reasons we ran away from Zara, from the bombs, and then from (partisan leader Marshal) Tito and travelled to Italy, these people have left their countries," says Liliana. ``Why are they treated like criminals?"
``If these people want to come here, they should be allowed," adds Lydia. ``We should be proud they want to come here, and that we can help them and share our life and country."
Says Liliana: ``There is a fear among ignorant people that these newcomers are going to take the jobs, take all the opportunities. But it doesn't happen like that. We all create our own opportunities."
The sisters say when the post-war International Refugee Organisation (IRO) in Italy told them they were being sent to Australia, they didn't want to come. ``The difference between us and between these boat people is that they wanted to come here," says Liliana. ``To be truthful, we didn't want to come to Australia, we were told."
``But now we are glad," adds Lydia. ``We have made our lives here, and our children live here."
In 1943, the life of the Marcuzzi family was changed forever. One day, an Allied bombing raid began as the girls returned home from Mass. As Lydia and Liliana fled for the basement, a bomb hit their four-storey apartment building. Lydia and her mother were buried, Liliana was miraculously left standing, surrounded by a pile of rubble that was her home.
Brother Giorgio had returned from church as neighbours dug Mrs Marcuzzi and Liliana out. All the time their mother cried, ``Lydia, Lydia. Where is my Lydia?" for the twin they thought they had lost.
``People were saying, `Oh, forget about Lydia, Mrs Marcuzzi, she's dead'," says Liliana, ``but I didn't think she'd died. I just had a feeling."
Two hours later, a shell-shocked, dust-covered Lydia was brought to the hospital. She had been saved by the bodies of two women - one alive and one killed.
Even now, she is fearful of the sound of low-flying planes or thunder. ``For a long time I was in shock - we were all in shock," she recalls. ``And we had lost everything."
The Marcuzzis decided to get out of Zara. For months, they travelled from village to village, through the area controlled by Marshal Tito's partisan forces who were working with the Allies to defeat the Germans. Eventually, with the partisans' help, they bought four passages on a small, rickety boat and, for three months, island-hopped across the Adriatic. In 1944, they arrived in Bari, on the east coast of southern Italy, where they were put in an Allied detention centre.
For the next seven years, the Marcuzzis were shunted around Italy's post-war refugee camps. When they first arrived, the girls' heads were shaved and their clothes destroyed. But soon they became teenage beauties, attracting the attention of Italy's cinema directors and winning some small non-speaking roles in the burgeoning industry. (Both appeared in Quo Vardis as Roman slaves.)
In Naples, Liliana met and fell in love with an IRO official, Ugo del Porto. Not long after, Mrs Marcuzzi received notification they were being sent to Australia and Ugo asked for Liliana's hand in marriage. Mrs Marcuzzi told him they were going to Australia, and if Liliana still wanted him, he could follow. In 1951, the family boarded the Fairsea, arriving in Melbourne on Anzac Day.
Following a short stay at the Bonegilla refugee camp in Albury-Wodonga, the twins were sent to a live-in school in Toorak for young migrant women where they were taught English. ``If you said one word in your own language, you had to do extra duties," says Lydia. ``So, we all learned English very quickly." Soon, they were employed in the city's hospitals, looking after patients and acting as translators.
Ugo arrived and on March 15, 1952, they were married. (Their 50th anniversary will be celebrated next month). He was very homseick, and when Liliana was six months pregnant, the couple returned to Naples.
For 14 years they lived in Italy, returning in 1967 with their four sons (the oldest, Alex, is a former mayor of Brighton). Liliana says she is blessed that for the last 10 years of her mother's life, they lived around the corner from one another in East Prahran.
The family tradition of living around the corner from one another continues. Lydia, who has been married and divorced, has one son, Frank, and two grandchildren. She lives in Armadale, just 200 metres from Liliana and Ugo, and sees her twin every day.
``We never quarrel," says Lydia. ``And anything she needs, I'm here."
``We're very close - like sisters," says Liliana with a laugh.
© 2002 The Sunday Age
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