OLBIA – A sense of adventure and a desire to discover new places have been part of Renae Lana Schmalow’s life ever since she began exploring the world in her early twenties.
“I fell in love with Europe,” she says, recalling how every trip left her dreaming of “staying, quitting my job, selling everything” and building a life in whichever country she happened to be visiting.
Then, in the summer of 2004, while walking through central Melbourne with some friends, she stopped to listen to two buskers performing on the street. One was playing the drums, while the other sang and played guitar.
Renae and her friends lingered to listen. Then, on a whim and without asking her, one of them dropped a piece of paper with Renae’s phone number into the open guitar case on the ground.
It was a small gesture, almost a joke, but one that would change the course of her life. That chance encounter led to a serious relationship with the guitarist, Beniamino, who is now her partner. Their relationship would endure its share of challenges, particularly visas and long periods apart.
Not long after they first met, visa restrictions forced them to spend six months apart. Beniamino was eventually able to return to Melbourne for another year, but by then he was on his final working holiday visa, and Renae decided to follow him to Sardinia to meet his family.
“I had never even heard of Sardinia before then,” she admits.
After that holiday, she returned to Melbourne and, without too much hesitation, decided it was time to pursue the dream she had carried since her early twenties: to get rid of everything and start a new life in Europe.
“Over the past 12 years, we’ve gone back and forth between Sardinia and Australia several times,” she says. But for the past four and a half years, the couple have lived permanently on the island.
Today they live in Olbia, although their first home was in an isolated hilly area with spectacular views over the sea and the island of Tavolara.
“We were far away from all the other houses, about a 35-minute walk from the small town of Murta Maria,” around 11 kilometres from Olbia.
For Renae, it felt like being on holiday. While her partner worked on a solo music project, she embraced the slower pace of her new life and thought about what the future might hold. During those months of relative isolation, she often wondered where this new chapter would take her, while “part of me thought that sooner or later we would go back to live in Australia”.
When the couple left their little house in the hills, Renae became more aware of the language barrier. Not only did she not speak Italian, she also found herself surrounded by Sardinian, a language virtually impossible to understand for anyone unfamiliar with the island.
Rather than giving in to the sense of isolation she sometimes experienced, she chose to embrace the moment and learn the art of listening, turning the challenge into an opportunity for personal growth.
Being able to communicate with others became increasingly important and motivated her to study Italian.
“Understanding humour was important to me. I love to laugh and I wanted to understand the jokes.”
There were times when Beniamino would translate a joke from Italian and “everyone would expect me to laugh, but they didn’t always work in English,” she recalls. “I’m happy to say that now I understand most of the jokes, and I love Italian comedy films.”
Like many people who move abroad, Renae found that the experience gave her new perspectives on many aspects of her own life. Living close to Beniamino’s family helped her rediscover the importance of family relationships and even brought her closer to her own family, while giving new meaning to simple, everyday gestures.
“There were family dynamics I wasn’t familiar with: everyone sitting around the table for dinner, sharing every meal, spending so much time together. Maybe those are simple things for a lot of people, but they were completely new to me.”
She remains deeply grateful for the affection Beniamino’s family has always shown her, welcoming her and making her feel part of both the family and the wider community.
Having spent around eight of the past 12 years in Sardinia, Renae now feels at home.
“Everyone is kind, generous and caring. They’re also incredibly proud of their island, and rightly protective of it, given its ancient history, archaeological heritage and extraordinary cultural traditions.”
Although she still misses aspects of her life in Melbourne, she says that Sardinia gives her “a sense of peace that I don’t feel anywhere else and that, in some ways, feels very much like home”.
Her days are now filled with habits she would find difficult to give up – small rituals woven into the local culture that have gradually become part of who she is: making coffee with a moka pot, setting the table with a tablecloth, cooking proper meals and sitting down to eat them together.
At the same time, she has had to let go of some of her own expectations and habits to adjust to the “slower pace of life”.
“There’s never any rush to get anywhere here,” she says – a major adjustment for someone who was used to always arriving early.
“I’ve had to learn to go with the flow and not expect that if someone says we’re leaving at 10 in the morning, we’ll actually leave at 10. It could be two hours later.”
Piece by piece, like a puzzle, things have fallen into place during Renae’s life in Sardinia. And in another link connecting her life in Italy and Australia, she has managed to keep the same job she had while living in Melbourne.
During the pandemic, a visa issue meant Beniamino had to leave Australia within a month.
“As an Australian citizen, even I had to apply for special permission to leave the country,” she recalls.
“Because everything happened so suddenly, I thought I would simply help my employer until she found someone to replace me.”
But the strong relationship she had built with her manager, Joanne Royston, who runs a real estate agency in Williamstown, meant she was able to keep her position and continue working remotely from Italy.
“I’ll always be incredibly grateful to her,” Renae says, although working Australian hours from Sardinia can sometimes make everyday life complicated.
“You start very late at night and finish in the morning, and sometimes you lose a big part of the day.”
Fortunately, Renae and Beniamino are both night owls and do not mind working through the night.
In recent weeks, Beniamino, who performs under the stage name ThBenj, has released his latest track, Count to Ten, which he wrote, arranged and produced from start to finish.
“Music really is a big part of our lives.”
For anyone considering a move to Italy, Renae’s advice is to be open – to people as well as opportunities – and be willing to adapt.
For her, one of the most important lessons her new life has taught her is that “the simple things can bring you immense happiness”.
