Kate Paterson and her husband David left their home in Melbourne’s Richmond in July last year for a new life in Italy. With their two children, now aged two and four, the couple moved to an apartment they had rented online in Lucca, a town west of Florence in Tuscany.

They had never been to Lucca before, and neither of them spoke Italian, but they chose the town because of its mild climate, good services, its proximity to an international airport and its sizeable expatriate population. Soon after arriving, they enrolled their children in daycare and kindergarten, and began the long-term struggle with Italian bureaucracy.