Date of birth: 5 May 1938
Place of birth: Noto, province of Syracuse, Italy
Arrived in Australia: 19 December 1966
Occupation: Dressmaker/Factory Worker/Housewife
[Noto] is a beautiful town. When I left it, there were 45,000 inhabitants, but unfortunately we had to leave, because our small town was more for the rich than for the poor. There weren’t any jobs for the poor workers, so everyone left. It’s now 18 years since I left and I haven’t been back once.
To tell the truth, now I have resigned myself so much that I don’t even think about returning to Italy. My roots are planted here now, I have one married daughter, and I think about the other two who are growing up. This is the family I have established here and so it is difficult to go back to Italy.
My father was a prisoner [of war] for many years. My mother was very young when he left – she was barely 19 years old when he was called up. So she was left with me and a little daughter who was yet to be born.
After seven years, when the war ended, he came home. He worked for himself, driving a horse-drawn cart, and he had a share in a mill. He delivered pasta and flour, working night and day.
The family began to grow. We were four sisters. I was the eldest child and I remember that mum couldn’t give me everything that I wanted. She wasn’t even able to keep me at shcool. I was very good at school, and I would have liked to continue to become something, a teacher or whatever.
I went up to grade five. After that I was to go to Junior High School, but dad didn’t want me to. He just wanted to send me to convent school to learn embroidery from the nuns, so he could be sure that I was safe.
There in our town, there were several dressmakers who took young girls into their homes to learn. After the convent I went to an old dressmaker – there were many of us girls – to learn. This photo was taken in 1957. I am the second on the right. I stayed there until I married.
This photo was taken in 1958. My sister Lina and I are in our mother’s house. My father had bought us a sewing machine. These are the first clothes we sewed with the machine. My sister was studying to be a tailoress and I, a dressmaker, so my father bought a sewing machine just for us. We were very proud to have a sewing machine of our own.
I married when I was twenty, twenty one. We had our first child straight away. [In this photo] my little girl would have been just two. The three [other] girls are my sisters and that boy is one of my cousins. My [second] sister had become engaged and her young man had sent her the gladioli from France, where he had migrated. He had sent them to arrive in July, for her birthday. We had this photo taken to send it to him. Now my sister is here in Australia. When she married, her husband took her there [to France] and ten years later she came here. She was the first of my sisters to join me in Australia.
This photo was taken when we went for a picnic, the day before migrating to Switzerland. Here you can see my husband waving. He was saying, ‘I’m leaving’, but he wasn’t happy. I was the one to push him to migrate again. He did not want to leave his home because as a youth, he had always been on the move and he knew what the life of a migrant was like. He said to me, ‘If you want, we’ll migrate, but be prepared [for the possibility] that we may not return home’. And that’s how it turned out. We migrated to Switzerland and from Switzerland we migrated to Australia.
On the cart, from the right, there’s my sister who migrated to Australia recently from Germany. Next to her there’s a cousin of mine who is living in Germany. I’m next to her with my little girl, then there’s my father. Above us you can see my youngest sister who is also here [in Australia], married. Then there is my uncle and a cousin of mine. The person waving is my husband and down below you can see half of my mother’s face.
Here we are in Switzerland in Enlembach, Zurich. The photo was taken in 1964. Here I am with my daughter Ada. We used to rent this house.
I liked Switzerland very much because I made friends quickly with people who comforted me, and anyhow we’d go to Italy every year – it wasn’t far away like here. But I had to leave my little girl with my mother because the laws in Switzerland would not allow children to come into the country. When we returned to Italy the first time, my daughter did not recognise me any more. So then, from Switzerland, my husband’s boss got us a special permit for the child to come as well. I even sent her to kindergarten there.
We got to know some friends, and so one day these friends said, ‘Do you know that there are applications to go to Australia?’ My husband said, ‘I don’t think I’d be lucky enought to go to Australia. It’s a rich land’. These friends said, ‘Well, why don’t we try? Let’s apply and see if they accept us.’ So one evening I filled out the application as a joke, and soon after we were accepted.
Source: ‘1985. Brunswick City Council. For a better life we came’. Collected and edited by the Brunswick Oral History Project. Copies available for lending and sale at Moreland City Libraries (Brunswick) ph 9389 8600. Images taken after 1955 are available in the print publication. Original images available in exhibition boxes in storage at Brunswick Library.