European summers, Ferarri rides and drinking fine wine: how Kate Langbroek lived the good life in Italy

Radio queen Kate Langbroek missed savoury breakfasts and shopping at Woolies while in Italy — but not this Aussie trait.

Kate Langbroek vividly recalls two emotional moments while living in Italy.

There were many times she felt everything from pride to exhaustion, to exhilaration and despair.

Living in Bologna, the lively and medieval region in the northern part of the country, was a huge move for the radio host’s family of six — husband Peter Lewis and children Lewis, 17, Sunday, 15, Artie, 13 and Jan, 11.

But the times she cried stand out in the myriad of memories from an adventure that began on January 26, 2019.

The family boarded a flight for a journey intended to last 12 months, but only returned to Melbourne last month, two years later.

“A girlfriend of mine said to me, ‘I only want you to do one thing — remember the first time you cry’,’’ Langbroek says.

Kate Langbroek, husband Peter Lewis and children Lewis, 17, Sunday, 15, Artie, 13 and Jan, 11. Picture: Instagram.

“Even though things were really difficult, the language was hugely difficult, and I was working at the start for six months back here and getting up at 4am.

“I did not cry once until we were in France for the holidays in June 2019.

“We told the kids we were staying for another year. And Lewis took it really terribly. And he didn’t speak to me for three days, and for us that is very unusual.

“We had this horrendous dinner where the meal was beautiful and tasted like dust in your mouth.

“Lewis had tears in his eyes, Sunday started crying and the two young boys were fine with it all, but then the French waiters must have thought ‘what’s wrong with these people?’.

Then I didn’t cry again until it was time to leave.”

Lewis, who turns 18 in August, was in part the reason they made the move.

He was six when diagnosed with leukaemia and was in treatment for four years.

For so long the family couldn’t travel, and with him fit and well, she and Peter wanted them to do something life affirming together.

Langbroek understands the transition was hardest for him.

“We all loved it except for Lewis, but even he loved it at the end,’’ she says.

“It was because he had a secret girlfriend in Australia. They got back together and then broke up just two months before coming home. We had the two best months we had because his heartstrings weren’t being pulled back here.

“One day, we’re in Italy, at the most glorious piazza. And he said, ‘I miss Woolworths’.

“Then two weeks later one of his mates from school, Guido, he was going away with his mate for the weekend and Guido’s mum turned up in a red Ferrari. And I tapped on the window and said, ‘Are you missing Woolworths now?’.

Kate Langbroek during lockdown in Italy. Picture: Instagram/katelangbroek

Kate Langbroek and the fam. Picture: Instagram

“It was an incredible thing for us to do.

“We’d pushed our eldest son as much as we could in making him live a glorious life in Europe. How cruel we are.”

Langbroek speaks with a smile about the initial months, when they danced in the snow, travelled to the Carnivale in Venice and trawled the pretty streets of Amsterdam and France.

Then COVID hit hard and a brutal four-month lockdown began.

“We were just blindsided by it,’’ she says.

“If we cast our minds back to the people we were, would we have ever thought that things that happened would ever happen?

“It was originally two weeks and ended up being nearly four months. Restrictions just got tighter and tighter, to the point people couldn’t even take their dogs out.

“We knew lots of people with COVID and a few older people who died.

“The start was just crazy, and because Italy has the oldest population in Europe, that’s also why I think the Italians took lockdown so seriously. Everyone was so obedient and compliant and respectful. Everyone was like ‘this is crazy’, but the kids went to school with other kids who lost their grandparents.

“We knew so many people who had it.

My yoga teacher and one of Sunday’s girlfriends, their cleaner got it, so it was just the ripple effect.

“You needed a permit to go to the supermarket. I gather the second lockdown in Melbourne was brutal but we were over there going, ‘but you can go 5km’. We couldn’t go 500m. I was cooking – I lost count after 1200 meals. It was just where you were in the world.”

The family grew stronger while holed up together through lockdown and emerged in June last year with a view to again savour their surroundings.

“We had the most ridiculously glorious summer, to the point where you thought we have slayed the dragon,’’ Langbroek says.

Kate Langbroek and her family only planned to live in Italy for one year. Picture: Instagram

“We went to Puglia down south and jumped off rocks, we were eating buttery pastries.

We saw no masks in Puglia. Occasionally some older person would wear one, but then you see it creeping up. It’s a terrible lockdown now coming into winter.”

Langbroek had always booked flights to return at Christmas time.

They decided to make it a full move back home and, after some deliberation, she resisted the temptation to reunite with her beloved on-air partner Dave Hughes in a breakfast radio role in Sydney.

She and Hughes dominated the early timeslot for 12 years before excelling in drive for FOX FM, where she was eventually replaced by Ed Kavalee.

Instead of uprooting her family again she is staying in Melbourne, having signed for two years with the 3pm Pick Up on KIIS FM which she started on Wednesday alongside Katie “Monty” Dimond and Yumi Stynes. There are also other projects in the works.

“We had conversations about that but I couldn’t say to the kids, ‘Yeah, we’re coming back to Australia. Guess what? We’re moving to Sydney’,” Langbroek says.

“There were a few significant offers but they all involved big jobs. Hugh (Hughes) is a workaholic and he has to work and he loves a challenge. He’s wired differently to me.

“None of us know what the future holds but, suffice to say, there’s a great deal of love and respect between us. One of my favourite things was there was never hint of, which would have had to be fake, that there was any bad blood. Or with Sach (producer Sacha French).

“In radio duos most of them can’t speak to each other. We’re lucky and I am happy now living a quiet, unremarkable life.”

Dave Hughes and Kate Langbroek. Picture: Black and White Publicity.

It has taken Langbroek over a month to unpack the six suitcases, 18 bags and three boxes with which they returned.

Their 14-day quarantine ended on Christmas Eve and there’s been much time spent catching up with her parents here and the in-laws at Bright.

In June last year Langbroek and Lewis were given permission on compassionate grounds to return to Melbourne because her dad Jan, aged in his 80s, had been ill and was hospitalised on and off for six weeks.

“He’s old and he’s a bit battle scarred but he was with us on Christmas Day and it was amazing,’’ she says.

“I really think in retrospect it was so lucky we came back between that first and second lockdown.

“He was in hospital and we thought it was curtains. Lewis had finished exams and I just said to Peter I knew I had to go and rub his bald head.

“We got out of hotel quarantine and picked up Mum and went straight to see him, and the difference between that and eight days later when we left ... you just go ‘that’s the power of love’. And his Dutch determination, of course.”

Speaking of love, there is and always will be plenty of that for Italy.

Langbroek raves about the food, the beauty, the culture and the freedom.

She is writing a memoir of the family’s time away, which she started to pen during lockdown.

“It’s one of those things where you don’t realise how much you are of your own culture until you leave it,’’ she says.

“Even growing up I didn’t feel particularly Australian, because my parents aren’t Australian.

“The Italians’ attitude towards beauty is just inspirational, really. It’s not a shallow concept to them. They make everything beautiful.

“They’re very shy and not youth obsessed like we are.

“They just see it as part of a journey of life. They’re very family oriented, as everyone always says.

Kate Langbroek has returned to Melbourne after two years living in Italy with her family and will return to radio on KIIS FM's 3pm Pick Up. Picture: Rebecca Michael.

“They’re very respectful of history, I don’t know how they knew not to knock down their old buildings and we didn’t know that here. They’re not blind snackers – in fact, it was interesting how you’d never see them walking and eating, or walking and drinking. Here we walk like we cannot go 10 steps without caffeine.

“They also do this thing that I find mad: they have a sweet breakfast, which I couldn’t get on board. There was no going out to a cafe for bacon and eggs – that’s just not a thing. “Everything starts with pasta and we got very good at drinking wine with lunch.

“They’re horrified by thongs anywhere other than the beach. Horrified by wet hair.

“They’ve got 100 expressions for having a sore throat.

“It was nice to live with people who live.”

If she has a gripe about Melbourne, Langbroek says it is the officious way of life.

“Coming back now, of course, into the summer is beautiful, and driving into Bright up the

Hume I thought ‘how beautiful are those rolling plains’,’’ she says.

“But I have not missed the Australian small mindedness.

“Within 10 minutes of leaving the quarantine hotel we were stopped by police.

“We drove at 160km/h on the roads in Italy and never got stopped by the police once.

“I liked the freedom over there. Just that finger wagging thing in Australia – I did not miss that.

“Australia is very risk averse but I find it oppressive to the spirit. I like sitting in a cafe and maybe someone is having a cigarette.

“As my friend Giovanni said to me, ‘It’s not my problem; it’s your problem’. And the Italians like to enjoy themselves.”

It was through the spirit of Bologna that Langbroek’s trip, dubbed on social media as #sixtakeitaly, managed to flourish.

They chose Bologna but “could have literally dropped a pin” over Florence, which was too touristy, and Verona, because the people were rude. She really did live la dolce vita (the good life).

“It was originally going to be one year, and the first year was so much infrastructure and so much life stuff and trying to deal with Italianness – school and getting a car, and how to get around and shops and citizenship and papers, and passes to use the bins,’’ she says.

“It was brutal but also so brilliant that we went, ‘let’s stay for another year’.

“2020 was going to be our year. I don’t want to sound like a European pig but we were going to Spain, France, Amsterdam, and so many of our family and friends were coming over from Australia. 2020 is littered with minor heartbreaks and there were major heartbreaks, too.

“We ended up having quite a lovely life in lockdown. I do think ‘how did we do that?’.

I believe anything you do in life that’s good is difficult.

“Not once did I regret any of it.”