Koroit has always been home for Mrs Fiorini-Lowell, who was born Mary Bourke at her family’s pub, now named after her brother, Mickey.

“When you’re getting old, it’s nice to be with your family.

Her historic cottage on the rim of Tower Hill resembles its owner – colourful, tiny and full of stories.

Both are ageing gracefully, but navigating the small cottage and rambling garden has become harder for Mrs Fiorini-Lowell as age and body tremors take a firmer hold.

“I can’t write now, or I can, but very badly.

“I miss the piano terribly, and the cello and I miss the garden.”

When the tremors get too much she is in her cottage, surrounded by the art, photographs, books and memories of her years of living and working around the world.

She has always had a love of performing and when a Melbourne theatre doyenne told a young Mary Bourke that she had the world at her feet she needed little further encouragement.

“All I wanted to be was an actress,” she says. But it was in radio, not on the stage, that Mrs Fiorini-Lowell found her niche and she starred in numerous serials.

“People used to sit around radios like they sit around televisions.

While holidaying with a friend in Adelaide she met the next love of her life – an Italian waiter at an upmarket restaurant called The Capri.

“Well I thought he was a waiter, but it turned out that he was the owner.”

A young Mary and Louie Betello bonded over music and opera.

“I used to look at him and think he’s not terribly, terribly handsome, he’s going slightly bald, but when he walks into the dining room the place seems to light up, he was the most extraordinary man.

“That was the start of a wonderful romance.”

The couple became engaged, but it was another five years before Louie had enough money to marry.

“That’s when I went to Italy. I said to Louie ‘I’ll come back as soon as you can marry me’.”

On her travels Mrs Fiorini-Lowell fell in love with Italian art and culture and went to work on several films, even becoming the dubbed voice of Gina Lollobrigida, once voted the most beautiful woman in the world.

Before tying the knot, Mrs Fiorini-Lowell says she also played an unwitting role in Cold War espionage when she took a job selling Christian Dior fashions in the outback.

“Because there had been war, it’s hard to imagine how poor we were as far as fashions and eveningwear, you couldn’t have anything during the war.”

Mrs Fiorini-Lowell says she was part of a team who ventured into far north Queensland with caravans spruiking their wares. 

“We flew up to Townsville, it was like being in another country it was so hot. 

“One car would go on to the little township and they would go to every house in that town and organise small gatherings.

“We had to write down all the little details about the houses and the two men would stay up late at night making these maps and writing them all down.”

When the group arrived in Cloncurry the police were waiting for them.

“At certain towns we would be dropping off a big parcel of books and at another little town we would come to they would measure the distance from the post office to the railway station and they were always stopping at railway stations or aerodromes. 

“It turns out they were spies for Moscow and the whole thing was a cover – they were mapping out the whole of outback Queensland and every house, every rooftop,” Mrs Fiorini-Lowell says with a chuckle.

After so long apart, she and Louie were eventually reunited and married soon after.

“When I came back Louie had learnt English and I’d learnt Italian and when we talked it was like flying through the clouds, we could communicate in a completely different way, it was wonderful.” 

The newlyweds ran a coffee lounge in Adelaide before Louie suffered a heart attack and they moved to Melbourne and both worked as teachers.

Mrs Fiorini-Lowell recounts meeting famous tenor Pavarotti, organised through her sister’s industry connections, as one of the highlights of married life.

“Louie was in seventh heaven. When Pavarotti sang a marvelous aria, Louie just got up and was shouting ‘bravo, bravo’, and he clapped and I thought he was going to have a heart attack… but I thought, what a wonderful place to die.”

They were only married for nine years before Louie’s heart finally gave out. “He had a massive coronary.”

“But it was almost as though he’d lived a full life because he was terribly alive and interesting.”

Following her husband’s death, Mrs Fiorini-Lowell returned to the south-west, renovating the Tower Hill cottage she bought for just 100 pounds a few years before.

She became the first full-time drama teacher in Victoria when Warrnambool Tech put her on “as an experiment”, but her love of all things Italian grew stronger and she returned to Melbourne to continue her language studies.

By then, it was the late 1960s and Mrs Fiorini-Lowell returned to Italy, studying at Perugia before teaching language and literature in the medieval city of Macerata.

Keen to see the world, Mrs Fiorini-Lowell hitched her way around.

“I hitchhiked from Copenhagen to London. I hitchhiked all around England, Ireland and Scotland, but you could do it in those days. I never had one unpleasant experience.”

It was then on to Rome where the poetry lover approached the British Council to see if they would be interested in a recital of Robert Browning’s work.

They declined, instead requesting she present a program of Australian poems, which were then the height of fashion.

This success led to an invitation from the Australian Embassy to perform in Venice. 

Mrs Fiorini-Lowell came back briefly to teach in Warrnambool, before returning to Italy and attending a reception in honour of colourful Australian Immigration Minister Al Grassby.

“At 2am in the morning Al Grassby and I sang Waltzing Matilda,” she says.

She began teaching in Venice, but times were tough. 

“It was a terrible time in Italy between the communists and anti-communists.

“There was absolutely no money, no jobs, the people who were singing at the opera couldn’t be paid, you’d go into a shop and all of a sudden the lights would go out.

“The communists were getting so strong and the Red Brigade (a left-wing group responsible for numerous violent incidents) were getting so strong.”

Struggling for work, Mrs Fiorini-Lowell called on her Catholic faith. 

“I read that if you gave your complete life to God, He would look after you, you didn’t have to worry anymore. So, I thought, I believe in God, why should I be so worried about where my next meal is coming from?

“I decided I would not worry but leave it to Him.”

Mrs Fiorini-Lowell credits this for the good things that soon came her way, including a film role with Tyrone Power and an invitation to stay with her sister and her husband, who were then living in Israel.

Inspired by Italian religious art, particularly the work of Tintoretto, Mrs Fiorini-Lowell had begun writing poetry based on the gospel.

“Once I was in Israel they just started pouring out. I was so inspired with the Holy Land.”

She soon had enough religious poems for a recital, and performed at the palace of Pontus Pilate. On returning to Australia she continued to give recitals and her Poems from the Holy Land was published in 1980.

She got back to Koroit to find rats and eaten through the roof of the cottage and the garden was running wild.

It was while sorting through the mess that she met her second husband, Frank Fiorini-Lowell.

“Friends came to welcome me back and they came to the kitchen door with Frank.”

A keen sailor, Frank took Mrs Fiorini-Lowell out off Port Fairy for their first date.

“The waves were coming in and I got sick. Frank was saying ‘don’t worry, don’t worry’ and cleaned it all up. He took care of me.”

Frank has been caring for her ever since. They married in 1991, cleaning up the cottage together and then worked in Sydney and Port Douglas. They called Queensland home for 12 years before moving back to Victoria. 

“I’m here for good now.”

Retirement has given  Mrs Fiorini-Lowell plenty of time to reflect on her adventures. 

“I suppose you could say that I’ve had a pretty interesting life.”