The Coming of Age of Dr Joe

At 95 years of age, Dr Joe Santamaria has a wealth of stories. The son of Italian immigrants who arrived in Australia from the Aeolian Islands in the early twentieth century, he was born and raised in West Brunswick. His parents ran a grocery and wine store nearby in Sydney Road, Brunswick. It was a time when the area was a developing suburb with a mix of ethnic groups, mostly British, Irish and Italian. Both his heritage and growing up in the era of migrants mixing with "ordinary Australians" influenced his personal growth.

His recollections, which are factual as well as humorous, lead us like stepping stones through various points of his life, both in the home growing up in an Australian-Italian household and later in his life when he struck out on his own. Also included are several poems penned over the years for family members for birthdays, or simply because a place or event struck Dr Joe as lending itself to a few verses.

Keen to pass on to his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren knowledge of their origins and culture, his recollections are preceded with a history of his grandparents and parents. In this introduction, he also discusses some of the political events in the world when he was growing up and the effect they had on his family.

Dr Joe Santamaria graduated in 1948 in medicine, specialised in haematology and oncology and later became the Director of Community Medicine at St. Vincent's Hospital. He was married to Dorothy (née Cook) for sixty-four years and they have five children, sixteen grandchildren and eleven great-grandchildren.

Several of these stories were previously published in 'The Education of Dr Joe' (2006 Connor Court Publishing).