FREMANTLE Italian community stalwart John Alberti has been honoured as a Knight of the Order of the Star of Italy, that country’s highest honour for a citizen living overseas.

Mr Alberti was surprised with the honour by Italian consul Sergio Federico Nicolaci at a gala marking the Fremantle Italian Club’s 52nd anniversary, receiving a certificate signed by Italian prime minister Sergio Mattarella and the award’s insignia, including a pin and ribbon.

“It was a surprise, pretty much for everybody because nobody knew it was going to happen,” Mr Alberti told the Herald.

“It was presented here at the club.”

Mr Alberti, who received an Order of Australia Medal in 2019 for his services to the Fremantle community, said the Italian honour was particularly meaningful.

“It was an amazing night; very emotional, you know, to receive such an honour.

“I love my birth country, love it, but I love my home as well here in Fremantle.

The former Fremantle councillor and Justice of the Peace, who arrived in the city aboard the Neptunia in 1959, has taken on a new role at the club, stepping up to the presidency after Fred Calginari decided he needed a rest.

Mr Alberti said he was only three weeks into the role but has plans for the future.

“We’ve got to change things; the club is old now.”

Recent funding helped get a repaint and a fix-up of toilets and a storeroom, but Mr Alberti said more needed to be done.

• John Alberti and his wife Anna celebrate being made a Knight of the Order of the Star. Photo by Steve Grant

Challenge

The bigger challenge, however, was finding ways to attract younger members.

“What we actually need at the club now is we need the younger generation to come in.”

Mr Alberti remembers the club in its heyday, when the the bar was four-deep and you had to reach across to get a drink, but these days he notes membership numbers are dwindling at roughly the same rate as Italian names fill funeral notices in The West.

Regardless, the club is still one of the few in the state still operating in the black, and he’s looking at new events, including corporate functions, conferences and additional meals, to bring more people through the doors.

He had also spoken to a young chef and pastry chef about introducing Sunday lunches and Saturday night dinners alongside the club’s established Friday night dinners provided by its nonnas – who Mr Alberti was just about to shout a ‘thank you’ lunch for years of service when the Chook caught up with him.

He believes the club still has an important role, particularly for older Italian migrants who regarded it as a second home and came to socialise, play cards and speak their regional dialects.

“They’ve got somewhere to go.”

Mr Alberti says keeping the dialects alive is an important role of the club, particularly as many of them are disappearing back in Italy.

He experienced this during a trip back to Sicily last September, where a chance to whip out his mother tongue actually caught the locals off-guard.

“Some of the people said, ‘What’d you say? You know that word you just said, we haven’t used it in years’.”

For Mr Alberti, that means preserving the club’s role as a meeting place for the Italian community while finding new reasons for younger generations to walk through its doors.

He said plans for a redevelopment of the club site had not been abandoned, although progress remained uncertain.

“We haven’t lost hope. We haven’t lost hope.”

“I just hope that something happens while I’m still around.”

by STEVE GRANT