Date of birth: 7 December 1922
Place of birth: Marano Vicentino, province of Vicenza
Arrived in Australia: 1 November 1957
Occupation: Factory Worker and Out Worker
Marano lies at the feet of Mt. Pasubio. My town is a country town. Back then the majority of the people were farmers but they had children who went to work in work shops (1). There was a large factory in our town – the Rossi Knitting Mills, a textile factory – and many people worked in there. My town is a town that was very industrialised – not any more, now it’s gone to ruin, rather than progressing it’s gone backwards.
I went up to grade five there. I stopped going to school when I turned fourteen because at fourteen you went to work, see! I began working right away because dad wasn’t working, as he had been left an invalid by the First World War and he couldn’t work. He was on a pension but more than that was needed with eight children to feed.
I’ll always remember when I first started work, five times I received my pay packet with no money in it. Every time they gave a new job they wouldn’t pay me, because first I had to learn to do the work. And I will always remember the first pay packet I got, I got five lire a fortnight. Anyway I worked in the Rossi Knitting mills for almost twenty years.
Here, I was photographed in a hole amongst the ruins of the Belaria pier, in the province of Rimini, which had been bombed during the Second World War. The photo was taken about ’46, ’47. We were here with the Rossi Knitting Mills. For twenty days they used to take us to the beach you see! The Rossi resort was in Gateo Mare, but at that time we couldn’t go there because it had been damaged by bombs, so they booked a hotel in Belaria. The Rossi Knitting Mills would make weekly deductions from our pay when we worked and we’d go there every year.
I started working in the Rossi Knitting Mills when I was fourteen years old, but there were others who went at the age of twelve – but that was illegal. However the spinners in the silk mills, they used to take them on at the age of twelve but they wouldn’t register them – to be registered you had to be fourteen years old. registered means like here with the unions. Every two weeks when you received your pay there were government deductions and if one day you got sick you, well, you were insured (2), while those who were not registered were not covered. But since there was so much poverty and a need, you’d thank heaven if you managed to get a job.
This was taken the day we left Genova, on the ‘Neptunia’. The three of us – myself, my husband and my sister-in-law – are at the top. There are other people there too. Down below there’s my sister-in-law’s brother, my husband’s sister and my sister who’d come to say goodbye.
When we left in 1957, the situation in Italy was really bad but if we had stayed there a while longer, we wouldn’t have come to Australia for sure.
It’s been calm up ’till now but I think that they will realise that the prosperity of once upon a time isn’t there anymore. There is the beginning of a crisis there too now. Last year when we went there, I saw that there is a lot of unemployment, there has been some progress but I found it very difficult there too, it’s not easy.
This one with the ladder is the last farewell. We were at the top of the ship and down below, there was my husband’s sister and my sister with the guard, who’s about to remove the ladder as the ship is about to leave.
It’s terrible, parting is very hard but I had to settle down, start a family of my own you know? It looks like it was my destiny. I didn’t like to leave mum, dad had died, mum and my brothers also of course, but on the other hand, it’s a decision you have to make yourself, if you plan to start a family. No one achieves anything without sacrifices. You need to make sacrifices.
When I said good-bye to my mother and my brothers, the tears, I felt like dying. It’s hard all right, parting is very hard, ver very hard. With time you know if you love your husband then you’ll forget your mum. Well, forget in the sense that you resign yourself, no one really forgets their mum do they?
This is our pride and joy, the first child. We couldn’t express the happiness we felt. This photo was taken in 1958. He was born in hospital. I had no one, I didn’t know how to communicate. I needed someone to be with me because I couldn’t understand anytthing they were telling me. But I was happy there, they were very good, they did their best.
He was born very small, he’d eat a little bit and then he wouldn’t eat anymore so I, at night, would try and cry because the baby was crying. You find yourself alone, you don’t know what to do, it’s terrible. What do you expect? When your mum is there with you or someone older who gives you advice they say, ‘No try to do this, try to do that’, they’ll suggest something, life is different then. While here you find yourself in a foreign land, you can’t speak the language, you can’t express yourself. Oh it’s terrible! I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
It’s awful. I’ve cried many times because I can’t express myself the way I want to. You want to ask for something and you don’t know how to do it. And then there are those people who laugh at you because you can’t express yourself.
I came here and found work in a factory. I worked there until my first child was born. Soon after I became pregnant again and when the second one was seven months old, I worked at home doing mending, I worked at home for eight years until the children grew up. Then the little girl came along. I worked right up to the morning when my little girl was born, and started again forty days after the birth. I continued to work at home, I looked after my children, and when I began to take them to school I took on a part-time job.
That’s all. Anyway I’ve always worked and I’ve earned my living right up ’till the children were grown, and now I’m on a pension. I’ve finished everything.
1 Small backyard factories
2 Covered by the National Health Scheme
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.