Mr Mico puts this down to the departure of Father Giuseppe Canova, formerly of St Christopher's Catholic parish in Manuka.

Father Canova came to Canberra in 1973 and began a regular newsletter about births, marriages, deaths and other family snippets, which kept Italians in touch with one another. ''When he had a stroke and returned to Italy that fell away,'' Mr Mico said.

He said the influx of migrants over three decades until the mid-1970s stopped when Italy's economy recovered.

Once it was taboo to marry outside the community, but this was no longer the case.

Mr Mico recounts his childhood in Narrabundah in a poem that begins with the neighbourhood's ''thin-skinned fibro homes, coloured like lipstick counters at a chemist shop''.

His father, of Calabrian farming stock, won over the neighbours with pasta soaked in rich, red tomato sauce. But he thought the Smiths' lawns next door were a waste of water.

The Micos' yard was a jungle of tomato vines, hot chillies dangling under green leaves competing with garlic stalks. Pumpkins grew wild among the wattle.

The police were called after a pig was slaughtered to make bacon and prosciutto, which were hung in the garden shed.

Old Tony, their Italian neighbour, made ricotta cheese from the milk of a cow that grazed at the Causeway, an enterprise that also was closed down.

Tony's wife, Agatha, was the first to build a brick and mud oven, which left a lingering smell and taste of Italian bread.

Mr Mico said Frank Agostino hauled enough produce for a supermarket on the back of his truck from the late 1960s. The sound of his horn brought all the Italian women out into the street, before he opened a shop in Belconnen Mall.

Early settlers' children returned to Italy to learn the latest trends in hospitality, and returned home with the knowledge to upgrade their family's restaurants.

''Italians stuck closely together,'' Mr Mico said. ''One of the beautiful things was you would visit other families and always take a bottle of liqueur, which you never drank.

''They were like something on a lolly counter, all different coloured. We'd find a new colour and trot along for a visit with that.''

Until the late 1960s one had to break rules to get out into the wider community. ''My first girlfriend was an Australian and my family were ropable. I got a bashing from my father.

''We were going to the pictures on Saturday night and I caught the bus from Narrabundah to her place in O'Connor. I knocked on the door and her mother came out and I said I was taking her daughter to the pictures.

'''Oh no you're not, you wog bastard,' she said and turned the hose on me. Having said that, Australia was a great country for multiculturalism.''