LAND OF OPPORTUNITY

Q Tell us a bit about your family. How did your family build their life in Australia?

A Cairns, there’s a lot of Italians. My nonno (Salvatore Raciti) came over to cut cane. There was war back in the ’50s in Italy and he escaped that to set up a better life for his family. He said it was the best decision he ever made. There was lots of land, lots of opportunity if you wanted to work. So he came over on his own and built a life and then the family came over. That was the same for many Italians.

Q Do you know much about everyone else’s stories? Were there many common threads between you?

A On our first night in Cairns, we got together and had a few beers at the King Reef Hotel at Kurrimine Beach and individually we had a chat about where we were, where our family came from, how they ended up in Australia, and the common denominator was they all left Australia for a better life and everyone had to work their butts off and literally came over with bugger-all to create something for their families, which has enabled us now and second generations to have a good life and be brought up in Australia, where we have no war and relatively peaceful upbringings and opportunities to play a sport like rugby league, which is obviously why we are here. They were all very similar – all farming, all labour-intensive jobs, but the harder you worked, the more you got paid and hopefully that’s instilled a bit in our players.