VENDESI NEGOZIO. ‘SHOP FOR SALE.’ These words spray-painted on the corrugated iron roller door of number five via Dante echo throughout this ghost town. It is only the electric power wires, bundled in hazardous clumps that give any hint of industrialisation or human presence. The wrought iron balcony above casts a strong shadow of gaol bars… having sipped spritzes in Sicily’s jewel of Taormina, indulged in the marzipan fruits of Palermo’s pasticcerias and hiked the rocky craters of Mount Etna, it seems rather anticlimactic to be concluding our island holiday in such a prison. Vizzini is a forgotten Sicilian speck. This village rests sleepily, tucked into the folds of rolling hills south west of Catania. It is from here my maternal great grandparents, Giuseppe and Giuseppina Mantello, migrated in 1924. Today my mother and I trace our roots, in part to fulfil my 89-year-old Nonno’s nostalgic dream, but equally to satisfy my own curiosity. Vizzini is too insignificant to have a train station and our public bus from Catania never arrives. In fact, no buses do. The Sicilians are a fiery bunch and now their hot-headedness flows free like lava: curses in dialect scald us as the aggravated mob gathers, demanding information. It's futile. Shortly after, my white knuckles grip the wheel of a hire car among reckless Italian drivers and potholes. Sweating profusely with my mother muttering Hail Marys, we make it in one piece. The main road is eerily empty but we for the heavy bosomed dower matrons beset with thick scowls eyeballing us through curtained windows. The small main Piazza Umberto is crescent moon in shape. Vizzini was one of countless Sicilian villages devastated by Etna’s eruption of 1693, its legacy today is in the black lava stone blocks trickling through the square in diamond patterns on the ground. Cigarette butts are littered like confetti, the aftermath of a sorry party. A trio of elderly gentlemen sit on a central bench, offering them the best vantage point for surveillance. Had my family not left, I can imagine my Nonno passing his days congregating with them. Instead he is home in Werribee where so many of his Vizzinese paesani settled, in all likelihood entertained by a footy re-run. Here the boys club sits in companionable silence, or perhaps more in perplexity as to our unfamiliar faces. Vizzini is evidently not a hotspot for travellers. We reach Chiesa di Sant Agata. Outside is a board plastered in funeral notices. It is common practice across Italy to pin memorial announcements in commemoration of locals’ deaths. We spare a silent prayer for the old Antonios and Constantinas. “Look how young this poor Lorenzo was,” my mother “tsks”, her tone laden with scepticism. She’s right: the boy was just 24. We steal a quick knowing look and raise a cynical brow at the likely explanation: murdered by the Mafioso. I shiver involuntarily. The catalyst for my ancestors’ emigration was Giuseppe’s brother, Vincenzo, who found himself in grave danger with a death wish from this omnipresent dark force. Whilst taboo, the Mafia maintain a crippling power particularly in southern Italy ruling in the shadows with brutality. I feel an explosive flash of anger for the lives unjustly stolen, and the corruption that reeks through continued suspicious activity. Little wonder this picturesque but sinister corner of the world is abandoned. I amble over to the lookout to clear my head. Beyond the immediate mass of sprawling prickly pear bushes, the countryside is beautifully calm. The aroma is earthy, like the Werribee farm. There, the stench of fowl manure and rotting veggies is deliberately left to renew the soil. Here, Etna’s sporadic explosions are responsible for extraordinarily fertile land where olive groves and citrus trees flourish. On the horizon I make out distinctive turbines of a wind farm. The irony that Vizzini is grimy with graffiti and filthy rubbish, yet champions clean, green energy is not lost on me. The boot of Italy is after all a place of contradiction; a place of black ominous lava and of white sandy coast, of loquacious locals and fatalistic folk, a place of hospitality and conspiracies.