Salvatore Russo (1931–2012), Nonno, left a hill village in Calabria by ship in 1955, laid railway track across Victoria for six years, then built houses — including his own, in Brunswick, with a lemon tree he grew from a cutting.
Early life
The son of a shoemaker. He left school at ten and was laying stone walls by fourteen.
Family
He married Concetta by proxy in 1957 — she in Calabria, he in Melbourne — and met her off the boat a year later.
Stories about them
“He made coffee for anyone who came to the door.” — his daughter Rosa