Father and son finally embarked for Australia on board the ship Ugolino Vivaldi in 1949, landing at Melbourne on 17 February.

[3][4] At 13, having lied about his real age, George Baldessin began working as a part-time waiter at the Menzies Hotel in Melbourne; Owen Gammel, a fellow waiter and art student, was positively impressed by the artistic quality of his sketches of Port Melbourne docks, and encouraged the young George to enroll in an art school.

In this period, and most notably during his English stay, Baldessin discovered many artists that would profoundly influence his later production, including Francis Bacon, David Hockney, Peter Blake, Ingmar Bergman, and Luis Buñuel.

Cavaliere soon became Baldessin's mentor, and the surrealist vocabulary of his work played a decisive role in shaping the young artist's aesthetic.

In 1966 he won the "Alcorso-Sekers" Travelling Scholarship Award for Sculpture, and spent two weeks in Japan;[1][3][8] moreover, he took part in the exhibition 'Australian Prints Today' at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.[2] Baldessin married Shirley Anne ('Tess') Edwards on 10 April 1971 (he had been previously married to Alison Patricia Walmsley from 1966 to 1970); Tess gave him two sons: Gabriel (1975) and Auguste (1977).

[3] From 1975 to 1977 Baldessin lived in Paris; during his French sojourn he attended the Lacourière-Frélaut engraving workshop and hung out with Imants Tillers, soon becoming close friends with him.

Pears are an important symbol in the artist's iconography—representing women, sensual eating and physical desire—and prove the great influence of Alik Cavaliere's art on Baldessin.