Finding a new home

Storytellers will chart Melbourne’s immigration history in a unique event at the Library at the Dock this month.

Andrew McKenna and Peter Fernon will share tales of Irish migration in the 1850s and then, a century later, Italian migration in the 1950s in their story New World Dreaming on November 20.

Andrew’s great, great grandparents left the potato fields of Donegal for Melbourne in the 1850s, arriving in summer and welcomed by bushfires and wild dogs.

In contrast, Peter’s in-laws left Calabria in the 1950s following the war.

Both Andrew and Peter will use music and spoken word to bring to life the stories of a few of the millions who left old worlds to make lives for themselves in a new one.

This month’s event is the fifth in a series of free storyteller sessions at the Library at the Dock.

New World Dreaming is on at the Library at the Dock on Thursday, November 20 from 6pm.