Date of birth: 23 March 1937
Place of birth: Marsicovetere, province of Potenza, Italy
Arrived in Australia: 10 April 1958
Occupation: Professional Dressmaker and Factory Proprietor
My town is a small one, situated on a little mountain where it always snows in winter. We lived as tenant farmers, we had a small house with a bit of land. We worked this land and it produced everything we needed to eat, starting with the wheat, potatoes, beans, then in summer some tomatoes, water melons and so on.
And then we had some cows, some for working and some for milk, which we milked in the morning and we produced milk for the family to eat and to make cheese. Mum made cheese with the milk and she made ricotta, plus she made us something to eat every morning – a beautiful zuppa1.
I didn’t start school in the town where I was born, because when I was 5 years old we left our town and went to Lazio [to] this town called Fiumicino in the province of Rome.
[If I hadn’t migrated to Australia] I would have married a labourer, I would have worked only at home for private clients. I would not have had the opportunity that I have had in Australia to become the owner of a big factory that is now making about $6,000,000 in sales a year.
This first photo of my sister Maria and I was taken in Rome at a studio in 1945. The war had just ended, and we were celebrating the religious festifal of ‘La Madonna’ – it was the 15th of August, in Fiumicino, a suburb of Rome, Lazio.
I felt really excited to have this photo taken, as it symbolises my first year at school. the war came while we were in Rome, so I couldn’t start school at 6 years of age. I started school when I was 8 years old, after the war. I went to a school 1 kilometre away, which was called Lingua D’Orca. I’d walk, but in winter I had to walk 3 kilometres as the road became too muddy and we couldn’t use it.
I would have had to travel 30 kilometres to attend high school after I finished 5th grade at primary school, so I had to stop school, but I would have liked to continue my education.
The second photo was taken in 1949 at the same studio. My sister Maria and I were the only two girls left in the family at the time, because our eldest sister, Romilde, was already married – she married very young, at the age of 16 – and our youngest sister, Laura, wasn’t even born.
This photo was taken in 1954 on a farm we rented in Latina in the Lazio region. The man standing on the threshing machine is my brother, Romeo, and the other one is my brother Vittorio. I am wearing the first dress I had sewn for myself, it was green with black checks. I was only seventeen at the time, and I had just completed my first dressmaking course. Later I was presented with a diploma in dressmaking so I could teach dressmaking.
When I didn’t have sewing to do, I was always in the fields, because you have to remember that I was a farm worker and there was a lot that needed to be done, especially in the summer.
Harvest time was from the month of July to the month of August. the actual threshing day was a very busy day, and my sister Maria and I would help mum to cook for at least ten men, hired by my dad to help us with the harvest. the women from our hneighbourhood would come to help, as there was so much food to prepare. We used to make tagliatelle by hand, because we didn’t have the machine to make them as we have here in Australia.
Here we are in 1956 farewelling my aunty and uncle and their two children who had come to say goodbye on their way to Australia. I’m the girl at the bottom right of the photo. I thought that it was really bad for them to leave Italy, but after they had left, thinking about it, I said [to myself], ‘But look here, I cannot teach dressmaking here, because in our town there were already many who were teaching dressmaking, but if I went to Australia, perhaps there I could make my fortune. I could teach and have a future a bit different from this one in Italy. Who knows, maybe later after I was over there, I could bring my whole family to Australia.’
I started to think about all these things, but then I said, ‘Well it’s only a silly dream, because who would pay for my fare?’
This was a very special day for me, as it was the very day in 1958 that I left to migrate to Australia. To me, it didn’t seem such a difficult thing to leave, because I was enthusiastic about coming to work in Australia.
My mother was crying. Dad didn’t want anyone to notice – he had a hat on – but he was emotional, very emotional. then my brothers – there was one, Romeo, who didn’t even want to say goodbye because he said he would join me as soon as possible, so he didn’t even want to hug me – nothing.
So then [my sister Maria and Dad] accompanied me to the station. The trunk was put aboard with the glory box in it – I had all my glory box ready, in case I should get married. I was accompanied by my sister Maria to Genova, and we had a wonderful trip. We discussed our future. We talked about what to do after I arrived in Australia, to write about how I liked it, and things like that. then we arrived at Genova, I boarded the ship and Maria went back home.
This was the christening day of my first child, Nives, in 1960. I made her christening gown myself. The ceremony took place at the church of St. Margaret Mary in East Brunswick, and the party was held at the home of my mother-in-law in Merlynston. She is the lady standing on my left, and my mother is standing on my right.
When I was expecting my baby, I couldn’t go to the factory to work because I was too heavy, so my husband would bring the dresses home for me from the factory and I would sew them.
After Nives was born I still continued to take in work at home for a while, but then what I was doing at home wasn’t enough, so I returned to the factory.
In the meantime, while Nives was growing, my husband went to work in a factory that was making men’s suits, so that he learned to cut using a machine. Then one evening while coming home he thought that since I knew how to sew [and] he knew how to cut, maybe we too could start a factory. So it was that after no so long, in 1961, before Nives was 1, we started to work for ourselves.
1 Zuppa – Italian soup made with bread and milk
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.