They're a Weird Mob : Text Classics

Who the hell’s Nino Culotta. That’s what you asked yourself when you first picked up this book, wasn’t it? Well I’m Nino Culotta. My father baptised me Giovanni—John—well Giovannino is like Johnny, and Nino is an easier way of saying it. Or a lazier way, if you like.

Just off the boat from Italy—the north—Nino Culotta arrives in Sydney. He thought he spoke English but he’s never heard anything like the language these Australians are speaking.

They’re a Weird Mob is an hilarious snapshot of the immigrant experience in Menzies-era Australia, by a writer with a brilliant ear for the Australian way with words.

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Watch film clips from the 1966 film production of They’re a Weird mob on australianscreen, a website operated by the National Film and Sound Archive.

Praise for They're a Weird Mob:

‘A riotous comedy.’

Age

‘Nino Culotta encouraged Australians to laugh at themselves, while providing a walloping hint for the ‘New Australians’ who were gracing our shores: ‘Get yourself accepted…and you will enter a world that you never dreamed existed,’ he wrote. ‘And once you have entered it, you will never leave it.’ The book remains just as relevant today: Weird Mob is about good people trying to make a go of things. With its rollicking and affectionate humour, it showcases our manners, our wit and our distinctive vernacular— where ‘they open their mouths no more than is absolutely necessary’.’

Jacinta Tynan