Veneto market gardeners 1927

In this blog you will read about Luigina Montin nee Rech who was born in Adelaide to parents who migrated from the Veneto region between the wars.

Luigina is pictured in the image above with her parents, Bernardo and Maria Rech and her older sister, Luciana, Adelaide, c 1947.

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When Luigina Montin nee Rech thought about her life in preparation for this blog, she said she was half Italian and half Australian. Reflecting more deeply, she acknowledged that her Italian heritage had had a huge impact during her life through her parents, relatives and friends. Luigina says she is proud of her family history and always wanted her children and grandchildren to value their inheritance as Italian Australians.

But – there is one thing that Luigina says gives her a sense of being Australian and that is her passion for sports, especially tennis. Luigina has played competitive tennis since she was 18 years old and even now, participates at a local club every week. Luigina proudly told us she has been to every Grand Slam – the Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon and US Open.

 Family background

Luigina was born in Adelaide in 1942. Her father Bernardo was from Seren del Grappa in Belluno in 1904 and migrated to Australia in 1926. After working in the mines of central Australia, he settled in Adelaide and befriended Gelindo Rossetto and Lina Rossetto nee Bordin. At Lina Rossetto’s suggestion, when Bernardo went back to Italy in 1937, he called on Lina’s sister Maria Bordin, 9 years his junior, in Biadene near Montebelluna in Treviso. They fell for each other and as Maria had no family left in Italy she decided to come to Australia with Bernardo.

Lina and Gelindo Rossetto were part of the small network of Veneti who had settled in Adelaide between the wars. They provided support for Bernardo as he had no other relatives in Australia at the time. Lina continued to be involved in the life of the Rech family, and she was like a grandmother to Luigina’s children. [See three blogs about the life of Lina Rossetto]:

https://venetimarketgardeners1927.net/a-proxy-marriage-1930/

https://venetimarketgardeners1927.net/significant-elders-adele-rossetto-1904-1997/ and

https://venetimarketgardeners1927.net/significant-elder-lina-rossetto-nee-bordin-part-2/)

 A future in Australia – and a family

Within a week of arriving in Australia, Bernardo and Maria had married at the Registry Office and went to live with Lina and Gelindo in the west end of the City of Adelaide.

After he first arrived in Adelaide, Bernardo had worked in the mica mines at Harts Range, like many other young Veneto migrants. Maria and Luciana lived with him on the mica fields for a couple of years.

 

Mica was used widely in World War II for navigation equipment and in insulation in electrical items such as irons and toasters. Bernardo also worked for concrete contractors in the building industry in Adelaide.

 

On 8^thAugust 1938 Maria and Bernardo welcomed their first daughter, Luciana, and Luigina was born four years later, on 1^st April 1942. The family lived in Crowther Street in the City of Adelaide at the time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By 1945 Bernardo and Maria purchased a house at Rose Park which also became a first home to Bernardo’s brothers and other young single Italian men who migrated after the war, several of whom he sponsored.

Later Bernardo bought a truck and carted grapes from the Riverland to Penfolds Winery at Magill. He became chronically ill early in his 50s and died at the age of 56 years in 1960.

 

Until that time, Maria had been a homemaker and looked after boarders at Rose Park. After Bernardo died, she went to work in a factory that produced cotton and other fabrics.

Luigina – growing up

Before she went to school at Loreto College, at 5 years old, Luigina did not speak English because Veneto dialect was the family language.  Although she loved sport, she did not like school and left when she was 14 years. She enjoyed spending time with her father and sometimes went with him to the Riverland when he collected grapes. Luigina remembers that “he was a loving and attentive father and joked a lot with children. I didn’t have enough time with him.”

 

 

Luigina’s first job lasted 12 years. She worked for her brother-in-law Giordano Rossetto at the European Grocery and Wine shop in the City of Adelaide. She enjoyed the work and the opportunity to meet customers. Part of her role was to assist with catering for weddings – work that included setting up tables at the venues, preparing and serving food and cleaning up the following day.

 

 

Luigina acquired strong organisational skills which were in use when, at the age of 18 years, she organised her father’s funeral as her sister and brother-in-law and family were in Italy.

 Social life as a young woman

Growing up, Luigina remembers that her social life was centred around mixing with Veneti – through her parents and her own friends. Reflecting on her teenage and young adult years, Luigina stated that she did not have an extensive social life. She accompanied her parents and aunt to watch Juventus soccer matches. After her father died, she went to see movies with her mother and sister and gradually began attending dances at the Norwood Town Hall and the Fogolar Furlan Club.

Luigina liked her independence and gained her Driver’s Licence at the minimum age of 16 years.

She thinks that she was about 18 years old when she began playing tennis for a club. Before then she had enjoyed hitting balls against the wall of the house.  It was not long before Luigina was winning competitions.

 

From 1960 to 1965, the house on Norwood Parade became a busy three-generational household when Luigina’s sister, Luciana, her husband, Giordano, and their eldest daughter, Julie also lived there.

The steps to marriage

Looking back, Luigina considers that she was quite brave when, a week after she met him, she asked Mario Montin to accompany her to the 21^st birthday party of her cousin Silvano Rossetto (son of Lina and Gelindo Rossetto) in October 1964. She’d met Mario at a dance at the Fogolar Furlan Club and liked the look of him.

 

Luigina knew that Mario was doing concreting at a house near her home and went there to invite him to the party. Theirs was a whirlwind courtship – engagement in December 1964 and marriage on 5^th June 1965.

Luigina recalls that her mother was very pleased that Mario had come from the village of Caselle, only about 6 kilometres from Maria’s village, Biadene. “It was a big, big plus because they could talk about Italy. My mother really liked him and had more of a connection to Italy than I did and this did not change until we travelled there later.”

Mario had been in Adelaide for five years and although he had friends, his circle was not nearly as large as Luigina’s who had an extensive group of close relatives and Veneto family friends. They decided to invite the same number of guests and on Mario’s list, migrants from Caselle made up a large group.

Luigina chose close relatives for her attendants – her first cousin, Rita Rech, and the flower girls were her niece Julie and a cousin, Margaret Rech, from Melbourne.

 

 Raising the family

 After Luigina and Mario married, they lived in the Rech house at Rose Park that had become the base for so many newly arrived Italian migrants since 1945. They moved to the family home on The Parade at Magill in 1972 when their first child Anita was 5 years old.

Anita was born in 1967 and Peter, in 1972.

The Montins enjoyed social life with the extended Rech family and spent time with a group of Veneto families who often got together and whose children grew up with Anita and Peter.

Summer holidays in ‘Via Veneto’

For about 35 years, Luigina and Mario and their group of Veneto friends spent three weeks at the Kingston Park caravan park south of Adelaide. At the beginning, in 1969, there were about 20 families who enjoyed summer holidays together.

 

Adults played cards and bocce games. Children had fun on the beach and swam, and everyone relaxed together in the location in the caravan park that they called ‘Via Veneto.’

 Visits to Italy

When Luigina and Mario went to Italy in 1969 with Anita who was nearly 2 years old, Luigina felt as though “I knew where I was going.” She had heard so much about Caselle, and also Biadene where her mother came from. She felt as if it was all an adventure that first time and enjoyed being included in the Montin family and their daily life. They spent time with Mario’s many cousins. At that time, there was running water only in the kitchen and baths were once a week.

The passion for tennis

Luigina has played tennis for 60+ years – evidence of her passion for the sport. She had a break after she was married and returned when Peter went to school in 1977. Playing tennis, she has felt ‘Australian.’ She has always loved to compete and until a few years ago, played three days a week.

 

 

In 2022, in a local newspaper it was reported that Luigina had bought herself a new tennis racquet for her 80^th birthday and that she was oldest woman player in the Tranmere Tuesday Ladies’ Tennis Competition. Today, Luigina plays twice a week.

 

Life in 2026

Luigina states that family is the most important part of her life. She enjoys preparing dinner once a fortnight for the family – her daughter and partner, Anita and Maria, son, Peter and wife, Tania, and their four adult children, Xavier, Oliver, Zachary and Ava.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“The Italian influence is strong”, Luigina says, “There has to be brodo in the house or else there’s something wrong.” Mostly she speaks dialect with Mario and Veneto friends. The family keeps traditions at Easter and Christmas. Relatives and friends are very important, and Luigina keeps in contact with cousins in Melbourne and recently went to visit them. She plays cards once a month.

“Sport is a good piece of my life. I never miss a Crows [Australian Rules Football] home game and for many years I went with my good friends Norma Camozzzato nee Ballestrin and Rita Rech nee Mattiazzo until their deaths. Now I usually go with Anita. I always go to Adelaide United soccer matches. And of course, there is tennis!” Luigina also enjoys going to a monthly school friends’ lunch.

Looking back, Luigina says that as a young person she felt different and a bit out of place especially at school because she was Italian. For over 60 years she and Mario have built a life together, raised their children with the support of a close family and the company of caring friends and have enjoyed a lively social life. She liked the opportunities to visit Mario’s family and her Bordin relatives in Italy and enjoyed other international travel. All the while she has maintained her passion for tennis.

 

“I’ve had some sadnesses in my life with the deaths of my parents and dear friends, but the greatest sorrow was the loss of my sister and two of her children on Christmas Eve, 1986.”

Luigina is very proud of her Italian roots, her Italian identity and has passed on that pride to her children and grandchildren.

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Luigina Montin nee Rech, Mario Montin, Anita Montin, Peter Montin, Amanda Rossetto, Madeleine Regan

12 March 2026

All family photos supplied by the Montins.

In this blog, the focus is on another significant older member
of the Veneto community in Adelaide, Mario Montin.

The image above shows Mario and Anita Montin in Caselle di Altivole in 1969, when Mario made his first return visit.

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Mario Montin was 19 years old when he saw his first banana in May 1960. He was on board the ship, ‘Oceania’, in the Suez Canal travelling to Australia – a destination that Mario had not expected. He had planned to migrate to Canada where two uncles were living but this was not possible because of government restrictions on migration at the time. However, the priest at Caselle di Altivole had advised his parishioners that Australia was open for new migrants and this information led Mario and some friends to decide that they would go to Australia.

 Family background

Mario Alessandro Montin was born on 26 August 1939 in Caselle the eldest surviving child of Pietro Montin and Antonietta Piovesan.

The Montin family lived in a large household with Mario’s grandparents – a contadino family who owned a few fields or campi where they grew olives, wheat, corn and hay for their four milking cows. The family raised chickens and had a donkey for transport.

 

His father was a shoemaker and family members helped out in the fields. His mother’s father was a bricklayer and a ‘Mr Fixit’, a man who could fix anything.

Growing up in Caselle

Mario, like most of the young people in his village, was able to attend school for six years.

 

The war seriously affected the daily lives of people in Caselle and men like his father had been called up to serve in the Army. Mario was old enough to remember the fear when his uncle Nino was taken away for several days by German soldiers at the end of the war.

 

 

At the age of 14 years, Mario began work in a shoe factory and cycled the six kilometres to Caerano San Marco. He sold shoes at different local markets such as Valdobbiadne, Feltre and Belluno and he also repaired shoes at home. He was resourceful and used his skills also to cut men’s hair on weekends.

The Montin family was close and when he wasn’t working, Mario enjoyed spending time with his grandparents, parents and siblings. He also played bocce and cards with friends and relatives. As a young man, Mario spent almost all his free time in Caselle.

 The decision to migrate

Mario remembers that the economy was very bad and that many were living in poverty. Migrating to a better place seemed like the only choice. If not Canada, then Australia would do.

At the time, Mario thought he would leave for three or four years, work hard to send money back to his parents and return to live in Caselle. A further reason for his decision to migrate was because he did not agree with compulsory military service required of young adult males who were called up at the age of 21. He knew young men who had been conscripted, and Mario did not want to go through that experience.

 Leaving home, leaving Caselle…

Mario made the arrangements with the Australian Government in Trieste where he was required to undergo a medical examination and he paid a deposit for the voyage at the travel agency in Castelfranco. His parents were sad about his departure – they had already said goodbye to members of Mario’s extended family who had migrated to Canada and America.  He was 20 years old when he left in 1960.

The prospect of the trip was exciting for Mario and his 3 friends who travelled by bus to Genoa, about 400 kilometres away. Mario remembered that they sang – they were looking forward to the adventure of a long ship voyage and a new life in Australia. However, Mario’s mood changed at the port because he realised the seriousness of his decision and the separation from his family and life in Caselle– “I was very sad, and the tears set in.”

 First years in Adelaide

He was sponsored by Bruno Tessari who was married to Bianca Piovesan, a relative of Mario’s mother. They were from Caselle and had settled in Adelaide during the early 1950s and they met him when he arrived in Adelaide. While he had the security of the Tessaris, Mario experienced the challenges of a new independence because he had enjoyed the ease and comfort of living in a large loving family household in Caselle.

First impressions

Mario was very disappointed when he first saw Adelaide in June 1960 – “I arrived on a Sunday morning about 10:00 am and there were no people. It was empty.” This was a huge contrast with Caselle. He spent the first year living with his Tessari relatives in Walkerville and then moved into a boarding house in Hackney run by the De Pieri family from Castelfranco Veneto. He enjoyed living there with other young Italian men.

 Working life

He began working for Albert Del Fabbro, a cement/terrazzo contractor, on houses in the suburbs of Adelaide. He then worked for other smaller sub-contractors for about four years and even took his first plane flight to Ceduna when there was a job there.

 

For the first year or so, he sent most of his money to his uncle Nino in Canada who had lent Mario the money to buy his passage to Australia. After repaying the debt, he sent most of his earnings to his parents except saving to buy a second-hand car. He kept strong ties to the family through letters back and forth, and his mother wrote monthly.

 Social life

In the first years, Mario enjoyed playing darts at the Hackney Hotel with other Veneti, including Lino Gatto from Caselle who had arrived in 1961. Mario and his friends went to the Fogolar Furlan Club to a Saturday night dance and to play bocce on Sundays.

Meeting Luigina Rech

Mario had worked and lived in Adelaide for four years and had bought a deposit for his ticket back to Italy. However, his direction in life changed when he attended one of the dances at the Fogolar Furlan Club, and he became interested in a young woman, Luigina Rech, who had been born in Adelaide, also paid attention to Mario.

When Luigina received an invitation to the 21^st birthday party of her cousin, Silvano Rossetto, she decided to ask Mario to accompany her, and this led to an eight-month courtship before they married on 5^th June 1965. Mario looked back on their decision to marry and stated that it was very important that Luigina’s family had come from Biadene, only six kilometres from Caselle. There was a sense of familiarity because they came from the same province and spoke the same dialect – and he wrote to his parents and said that she came from “a good family.”

Mario invited all the families who had migrated from Caselle to the wedding reception at the Italian Club in the City of Adelaide.

In the image above, Mario and Luigina are seated in the middle, Luigina with a white hat, ready to leave the reception.

 Marriage and family

After their marriage Mario and Luigina lived in a couple of rooms in a house at Rose Park owned by Luigina’s parents where they lived for seven years until they moved into a house built by Luigina’s parents in 1972.  They still live there today.

Mario and Luigina enjoyed a full social life and mixed with half a dozen Veneto couples and Mario continued to play bocce at the Fogolar Furlan Club and for the Veneto Club after it was established in 1972.

Anita Maria was born in 1967 and Peter Anthony, in 1972.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mario’s working life changed when he was employed by his brother-in-law, Giordano Rossetto, at Pasta d’Oro at Norwood and at the winery, Valle D’Oro at Mclaren Vale for 4 years before he started a business, with a partner, John Breda, SA Olive Oil at Flinders Park. They bought olives from Melbourne and processed and packed the oil. Mario delivered the oil to restaurants around Adelaide and really enjoyed opportunities to interact with people. He worked there until his retirement in about 2005.

Connections to Italy

Mario has continued to hold a strong connection to Caselle through the 66 years since he arrived in Adelaide. He has always kept in touch with the family – at first, through letters, and later with telephone calls especially at Easter and Christmas.

After nine years, Mario and Luigina made a first visit to Italy with Anita who turned two years when they were there for three and a half months in 1969. Mario remembers the emotion of his return visit: “I came away by myself and came back in three.” Everything seemed strange – his youngest sister, Rita, had only been five years old when he left.

 

 

They made other visits to Caselle with Anita and Peter, and the last time that Mario and Luigina went together was in 2024. They have also visited Mario’s sister and brother and families in Canada.

 

 

Mario’s mother, Antonietta, who was in her late 60s in 1980, stayed in Adelaide with the family for several months.

In the photo above, Antonietta sits between her two sons, Marcello on the left and Mario on the right.

Four generations of the Montin family

The following photo of Mario with his mother, son and grandson was taken in Castelfranco Veneto in the province of Treviso during a family visit to Italy.

 Involvement with the Veneto community in Adelaide

For many years Mario has maintained interest in two community organisations in Adelaide. He joined the Veneto Club in the early 1970s – “All my friends were there – we could all go to the same place and speak dialect.” He played bocce and represented the Club in Sydney.

Mario has also been a member of  the Trevisani nel Mondo since its establishment in Adelaide in 1982. He has been President for many years. He enjoys the planning of, and participation in, the annual events that attract several hundred people with connections to the province of Treviso.

In retirement…

Mario enjoys spending time with friends and relatives as well as being part of the Trevisani nel Mondo. He feels very connected to his heritage – “Italia is in my heart.” His children and grandchildren share Mario and Luigina’s strong sense of belonging to the Veneto region.

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Mario Montin, Luigina Montin nee Rech, Peter Montin, Anita Montin, Amanda Rossetto, Madeleine Regan
8 February 2026

All Montin photos provided by the family.