THE PLANTS ARE still covered in dew as I wander early one Sunday morning through a stunning private garden in Mildura, discussing the city’s strong points and positive future.
I’m with chef and entrepreneur Stefano de Pieri, known for Stefano’s, his gourmet restaurant in the old cellars of the town’s Grand Hotel, his books and late-’90s television show A Gondola on the Murray.
Archaeologist Mark Grist, a Wergaia/Wamba Wamba and Nyeri Nyeri man, is also here and you could say his close friendship with Stefano is a metaphor for the modern cross-culturalism in this multicultural city on the Victorian side of the Murray River.
Stefano immigrated from Treviso in Italy to Melbourne in 1974, but he could have been born and bred here. In contrast, Mark has been based in this, his home town, after studying in Canberra and working nationally. Mark says their friendship is not so unexpected. He remembers going into the Grand Hotel years ago – still owned today by Stefano’s ex-father-in-law – and finding relatives working there at a time when many people wouldn’t employ Aboriginal people.
Stefano agrees Mildura has changed a lot since he moved here. “[Then] you wouldn’t have been able to buy, I don’t know, a Malaysian belacan,” he recalls. “Now there’s everything here.” This meeting of two friends from very different backgrounds is just one of the many pleasant surprises we encounter during a week in this thriving city, where we come across everything from avant-garde art and a Chinese flying school at Wentworth, to the “Garlic Man” basing his processing facility here.
Mildura’s population of about 52,000 includes Irymple, Red Cliffs and Merbein in Victoria. But it’s also expanding into nearby Wentworth, Gol Gol and Buronga and continues to grow. Many, including professionals, are newly arrived, but others were born here
