Amanda Vanstone’s first official engagement in Italy was to open the Australian Focus portion of the L’Isola del Cinema festival last Friday evening — on an ancient island in middle of the Tiber River. It is an incredible location with the reception on the marble banks and the sound of the river swishing by.

Luciano Ginori, the Italian director of the film festival, introduced the new Australian ambassador with a long loquacious speech and called her AMELIA WANSTON the whole evening, which gave the Australians who were present a great laugh all night.

Up close, Amanda is even larger than before and rather ungainly — charmless is a word that springs to mind. She seemed quite overwhelmed among the super-chic Roman crowd and that was quite satisfying after her loud pontificating back in Australia. Her husband, in the Denis Thatcher mould, apparently says nothing.

Amanda has been in an Italian language boot camp in Sorrento for months now and so opened the film festival in Italian — which was quite bizarre and rather brave of her. She did, however, get a good clap for her efforts. Signore Ginori continued to call her Amelia Wanston.

Then we watched the film Razzle Dazzle which is all about classical and modern dance competitions in Australia and is very ironic and sardonic in the Australian way. The Australian crowd roared with laughter throughout — you really had to have lived in Australia to understand its humour, let alone the accents. Every one of the Italians left at interval shaking their heads at the mystery of it all.

It was another late night. While Amanda, or Amelia, and her little escort were whisked away in a limousine, we walked home in the early hours of the morning, passing the Romans lolling on low divans amid candlelight on the rest of the island. It’s extremely hot in the city now but was really refreshing on the isola surrounded by water. We returned home tired but happy, wondering how the Ambassador had enjoyed herself.