The ANFE Italian Club has officially completed its move from Newstead to a refurbished former gym in Stafford, ending more than 40 years at Wyandra Street and marking a fresh start for one of the city’s oldest Italian community organisations.
Earlier this year, Brisbane’s ANFE Italian Club finally completed the move it had been working towards, opening a new headquarters in a refurbished gym in Stafford. For a club founded in 1962 to help newly arrived Italian migrants, the shift marks the end of its Newstead era – and the start of a new chapter in Stafford, where membership has surged to more than 1,200 in just a few months.
The First Stop for Italian Migrants
ANFE – short for Associazione Nazionale Famiglie Emigrati – was established in Brisbane in 1962 by community leader Commendatore Carmelo Caruso at the request of Italy. Its original purpose was practical and urgent: help migrants and their families with paperwork, translation, and the day-to-day challenges of settling in a new country.
Over time, the Brisbane branch evolved into a social and cultural hub, first meeting in temporary venues before acquiring land at 10 Wyandra Street, Newstead. The purpose-built clubhouse there, ANFE House, was officially opened in November 1981 and became a Sunday institution for generations of Italian families.
For more than 40 years, the Newstead building hosted lunches, card games, dances and fundraisers, much of it powered by volunteers and signature dishes such as pasta al ragù and bistecca al piatto.
But as Newstead morphed from a semi-industrial precinct into a forest of apartment blocks, ANFE’s committee found itself battling familiar inner-city problems: scarce parking, rising costs and declining attendance from older members who struggled with access.
By January 2020, members voted to sell the Newstead premises and look for a site in a less congested suburb where the club could remain viable.
Finding a New Home in Stafford
After inspecting multiple properties, the committee settled on a former indoor sport and recreation building – the old Stafford Fitness Centre – on Stafford Road.
In July 2024, ANFE was formally notified that it had to vacate Wyandra Street, bringing more than four decades in that building to a close. A final farewell event was held on 18 August 2024 before the doors were shut for good the following day.
That decision briefly left Queensland’s Italian community without its familiar inner-city clubhouse. For several months, ANFE’s focus shifted to the construction of its new home and fundraising. In 2025, that goal became reality.
New Centre Formally Opens
The formal opening of the new centre was treated as a milestone not just for ANFE but for Queensland’s wider Italian community. The ceremony underscored how much the club’s story mirrors the broader migrant experience.
Mr David Crisafulli, the grandson of Italian migrants, reflected on how earlier generations had relied on community support when they arrived with little, and described the new ANFE as “a little corner of Italy in the heart of Queensland”, open to all.
For ANFE’s president, Maria Antonietta Maruca, the daughter of the founder, the opening carried particular weight. ANFE’s official history notes that Caruso, who also served as ANFE’s national delegate in Australia, spent decades building structures to support migrants and keep families connected.
Caruso died just days before the opening of the Stafford centre. At the ceremony, Maruca described the new premises as “not just a building, but the future of our community”, and said that although her father was no longer physically present, his influence could be felt throughout the project.
Physically, the Stafford clubhouse remains recognisably an adapted gym: a two-storey building reworked rather than rebuilt, with new landscaping, fresh paintwork and interior changes to carve out dining, function and recreation areas.
Development documents show space allocated for:
- a main function and dining hall
- a bar and sports lounge
- a bocce room
- a commercial kitchen with pizza oven
- a museum and culture room.
According to current trading information, the restaurant now opens Thursday to Saturday from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., and on Sundays from 11:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., with regular trivia nights on Thursdays running through to December 2025.
Published 1-December-2025
