From suspect migrant to model Australian: Natale Italiano and the transformation of Perfect Cheese

Abstract

In 1930, when Italian migrant Natale Italiano founded the Perfect Cheese Company and began making cheese for other migrants in the inner suburbs of Melbourne, both his ethnicity and the cheese he produced were significantly out of place. While Italians were already the largest migrant group in Australia of a non-English speaking background, they were often the targets of xenophobia, racism and, particularly in the lead up to World War II, suspicion.

However by 1973, Italiano was used by the Australian Government as a poster boy for migrant success and the cheese that he produced was celebrated as innovative and worthy of imitation. This paper will explore how Italiano and his company went from a small, obscure, even illegal, business, hawking suspiciously exotic cheese to a foreign, marginalised people to a thriving company celebrated by mainstream Australia and regarded by officialdom as a local producer to be protected from foreign competition. By using a range of primary sources, specifically letters, dairy licence hearings, and other material produced by the Victorian Department of Agriculture, this paper demonstrates how both individuals and food products can progress from being outsider to insider when the social, cultural, and economic circumstances allow for it.