For three years now I have been studying Italian with the same group of people and the same teacher. From time to time different members of the group get together socially. The latest such gathering was at the country house of fellow student Maura and her husband Vic. The property is on the beautiful Fleurieu Peninsula, about an hour south of Adelaide city. Maura and Vic have had a wood-burning oven built on their property, and we were invited for that most-iconic of italian meals, pizza.

The drive to the property is beautiful on a winter day. The normally dry hills are now green after some substantial rains over the last weeks. Animals are in abundance on the back roads: kangaroos, cows, alpacas, sheep, ducks, geese and a profusion of native birds. We passed signs for koalas and surely they were up in the trees as we zoomed past.

When we arrived the dough was rising and the wood oven was fired up. Maura began rolling out the pizza bases, Vic cooked the pizzas and we all enjoyed them enormously.

The afternoon finished with Vic bringing out his piano accordion and playing a few tunes. Another classmate’s husband Nick also displayed his playing skills. We’re pretty sure we saw a glint in wife Nicoletta’s eye as she watched her long-time husband  caress the mother-of-pearl keys…