Organised by the Lismore Friendship Festival Inc, this year the event was held on Sunday, June 23, in Spinks Park, and combined Italian food, music, workshops and language classes in a free, family-friendly outdoor affair which saw around 4000 people in attendance.

The park came alive as locals and visitors alike joined in the festivities.

There were rounds of bocce, a tug-o-war challenge, and song and dance with the popular Curly Cousins, “a special group of people who work with children, sing songs in Italian and make up new songs about Italian things,” Ros Derrett, president of the Lismore Friendship Festival Inc, said.

“They had a great song about pasta this year, which was very cute,” she added.

Other highlights of the day included Domenico and his Latin Mafia Band, regular fixtures at the event who play tarantella-style tunes, and are “a huge part of what we do”.

Antonio Mazzella played dress-ups and performed, while the Italian food-court offered a sumptuous array of pasta, pizza, polenta, gelato and Prosecco.

For Derrett, though, the real highlight is that people of all ages come to the event with their families: “It’s intergenerational!” 

Italians have been coming to Lismore since as early as 1882.

Settlers arrived from New Italy, an Italian community established in 1879 near Woodburn, following a failed expedition to the South Pacific by Italians under the direction of the Marquis de Ray.

“Many Italians left that community as the land wasn’t very productive, and they came to Lismore,” Derrett explained.

They also arrived in waves after World War II.

“Many of the Italians who came to Lismore were initially agricultural workers, and worked on other people’s land, until they raised sufficient money to buy it themselves, and so they became land-owners,” Derrett continued.

“They came and they worked on banana plantations and on other plantations with crops that they could grow.

“There was a settlement at a place called Fernside, just outside of Lismore, with 16 or 17 families settled there.

“Others distributed themselves around the district...”

Many of the Italian families who came to the region were from northeastern Italy, in particular Veneto.

For this reason, the city council has a twin-relationship with two cities from Veneto, Conegliano and Vittorio Veneto.

This relationship was established in 1991 with the assistance of Peter Bortolin, a Lismore resident who arrived after World War II as a young man from Veneto.

‘Piazza in the Park’ included a tribute to Bortolin’s role in establishing the sister city relationship between Lismore and Conegliano, with Vice-Consul General of Italy in NSW Sergio Bianchi in attendance, along with consul representative Annalisa Fezza.

President of Comites NSW Maurizio Aloisi was also in attendance.

The event was made possible by the Lismore Friendship Festival organising committee, with Festival Manager Aliison Kelly and Committee President Ros Derrett at its helm.

Now in its fourth year, the festival is sure to develop and evolve – alongside the Italian community – for years to come.