Veneto market gardeners 1927

In this blog, Amanda Rossetto writes about her paternal grandparents who both came from the province of Treviso between the wars. Mandy focuses especially on her Nonna Adele or Lina and their strong relationship.
Mandy has written the blog in two parts.

The image above shows Amanda with her Nonna, Lina Rossetto nee Bordin, Adelaide, 1968.

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Early days – coming to Australia

I am Amanda (also known as Mandy) Rossetto, the oldest granddaughter of Gelindo Rossetto and Adele (Lina) Bordin.

Nonno Gelindo was the oldest of nine children born in Bigolino, Treviso. He was in the Alpini, however rather than fight in WWI he went and worked in the tax office in Venezia.  After the war, he refused to be a part of the growing fascist movement and decided to leave Italy, with a few of his brothers, because of the political and economic circumstances, and the safety of his family. Back home, this earned him the nickname “scampa paese” (a person who runs away from the village).

Nonno Gelindo has been the subject of a number of previous blogs – he has a very interesting story. However, I want to focus on my Nonna Lina in this blog.

Nonna was born in Biadene (P.Treviso), one of eight children (three died as infants). Her brother Diotisalvi (Salvi) and sister Amalia migrated to France and Nonna and her two other sisters Irma and Maria migrated to Australia at different times and raised families here in Adelaide.

 

Nonna and Nonno were married by proxy and Nonna arrived in Adelaide in 1930 to begin her life with Nonno on the market garden in Lockleys.

 

 

 From hardship and tragedy, resilience grows

Nonna’s life changed dramatically on arrival in Adelaide. Although very happy to be with Nonno, she had to endure living in a small hut without a floor, gas or power.  The bed was on the ground, and none of her family were here yet. Even though life was poor in Italy, at least they had those basic homely necessities like tiled floors with rugs and curtains. So, she set about making it liveable and worked hard alongside Nonno in the market garden.

Times were tough – it was the Great Depression – and they struggled to make ends meet. They ended up moving into a house in the west end of Adelaide (Fenn Place) after the birth of their first two children (Romeo and Elena). Nonno worked the market garden and had a milk round and Nonna cooked, washed and cleaned for relatives.

Nonna had seven children, three who lived to adulthood – my Zia Lena (Elena) who died in 2023, my father Aldo who died in 2012, and my Zio Silvano (Sid) who thankfully is still with us. All the Rossetto children were born in Adelaide. Tragically, between mid-1938 and 1941, Nonna lost four of her children, the eldest Romeo at the age of 7 from meningitis and three more who died as infants. As you can imagine this was devastating!

The deaths of her children coincided with the lead up to and early years of WWII, which meant that she had to cope with this mostly on her own, because Nonno was considered an “enemy alien” and was summoned to work in the Northern Territory for the security of Australia. He wasn’t home often. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to cope with this level of tragedy, along with managing the house and keeping food on the table for her small children… what incredible inner strength and survival instinct she must have had to keep going!

This wasn’t the first time Nonna had dealt with significant tragedy and poverty. As a child, she was 11 years old when she lost her mother to typhoid during WW1. Shortly after her mother died, she was sent to work as a nanny in Feltre. When things got really bad in the Veneto during the war, Nonna and her grandmother and sisters and brother went to Rome as refugees.

She became a housemaid for a family at the age of 12. During that time, she became very ill with pleurisy and was bedridden for two months – she was lucky to survive. When the war ended, they went back home to Biadene where she cooked, cleaned and helped her family eke out an existence. She eventually got a job as a nanny in Venezia, which is where she met Nonno Gelindo.

I guess she had built up some incredible resilience and courage from those early years. She survived her own children’s deaths with the support of her sisters Irma and Maria, her extended Rossetto family and in-laws (the Rebuli, Bernardi and Tormena families) and dear friends like Angelina and Vittorio Marchioro. She fought on and worked hard to keep her family safe and secure. It always amazed me, given what she had been through in her life, that she had such a love of life and such a good sense of humour.

Life in the 1940s – 1960s

In the 1940s – 60s, Nonna supplemented the family income by taking in boarders, migrants from the Veneto region, and Italian soccer players who had come to play for Juventus. She never stopped working hard or looking after people. In return, she was loved by them all.

By the time I was born in 1960, Nonna and Nonno had returned to Bigolino to live for a while.  Nonno became very ill and died in 1962. I never actually met him. Nonna used to say that he and I were kindred spirits, shared similar values and politics and that even though he was a hard man, I would have definitely softened him up! Apparently, he used to kiss my and my cousin David’s photos.

After Nonno died, Nonna returned to Australia to be with her children and grandchildren. By then the family was living in Kent Town on the edge of The Parade, (Norwood).

She was well known by the bus drivers on The Parade service and all the shopkeepers at Norwood. She expertly haggled with shopkeepers especially the butcher, to get the best quality and price for food. She rode her bicycle everywhere to do her shopping, loading up bags on her bike that she would leave at the local chemist. She had a deal with some of the bus drivers where she would put all her bags on the bus and then ride home and meet them at the bus stop just outside her house, where they would help unload them!! She rode that bike until she was in her 80’s.

Amanda Rossetto

All photos provided by Amanda.

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SAVE THE DATE

My book about the Veneto market gardeners in the Lockleys area, ‘I buy this piece of ground here’: An Italian market-gardener community in Adelaide, 1920s – 1970s, will be launched on Saturday 19th July at Mater Christi parish hall, Seaton from 2:00 – 4:00 pm.

I will provide more details including the price of the book in coming blogs.

Madeleine Regan
4 May 2025

 

Johnny Tormena died on 6^th April aged 97 years. He lived a long and very interesting life and through his lifetime he experienced many different historical events. He had a very rich professional life and he loved his relatives and friends. Johnny recorded an interview for the Veneto market gardeners’ oral history project in 2012 and at the end, he summarised his attitude to his life:

 I’ve been lucky in life, been lucky with health, and I’ve been lucky with my life here — I just hope that I can arrive to my final days feeling the same. (OH 872/18, 25 May 2022, p80)

 The image above features the Tormena family in Adelaide, early 1940s.

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 Family background

Giovanni (Johnny) Tormena was born in Bigolino, a village about 20 kilometres from Treviso, 60 kilometres from Venice and about 50 kilometres from Vicenza. Over his life, Johnny maintained a deep and strong connection to Bigolino and to his family history in that area of the province of Treviso.

Johnny’s father was Galliano Tormena who was a carter with two horses and he delivered goods from nearby railway stations to Vicenza and Padova and more locally.

Johnny’s mother, Severina, was the fourth of nine members of the Rossetto family – she and seven of her siblings migrated to Adelaide between the wars. Severina worked in a silk cocoon factory in Valdobbiadene, a five kilometre walk from Bigolino.

Johnny’s sister, Maria Rosa was born in 1933 and they remained close through their lives, sharing their home together until Maria Rosa’s death in 2021.

 Life in Bigolino in the 1920s and early 1930s was difficult – the recovery from the destruction of World War I in the area took a long time. In his interview, Johnny remembered that money was “scarce.” He recalled his mother saying, “Go out and see if you can get some radicchio … and see that the chickens don’t break the eggs because I can’t think of anything else to give you for food tonight…” I used to take that seriously because [laughs] I like my food. (p6)

 The Rossetto family – against fascism
Johnny’s maternal grandparents lived in a large household with their nine children born between 1895 and 1913.

By the time Mussolini came to power in the early 1920s, the family had strong views against fascism and there were consequences for their stand. Johnny spoke about his uncles and their decision to leave Italy. First, two brothers went to work in France and when their father was also targeted by the local fascists in Bigolino, some of the brothers decided to emigrate to Australia. Johnny explained:

Two of them decided to get out of Italy and they migrated to France. They were away for, I think, a couple of years and they came back thinking that things would have died down but instead it was getting stronger, and again they would get beaten up and when the Fascists saw that they couldn’t tame them or get them to think their way, they started to pick on my grandfather, and they caught him one time and put a funnel in his mouth and poured castor oil down his throat. And when they saw that, they said, “Okay we defend ourselves but now we’re a danger to our father, we either got to shut up or get out.” (p8)

 The youngest Rossetto son, Beppi,  migrated to Adelaide in 1938.

 Johnny encounters Mussolini
In 1937, when Johnny was ten, he was, like most young boys in Italy at the time, was a balilla – a member of a fascist youth organisation which provided quasi-military training alongside schooling. Johnny remembered going with a group of balilla on his first bus trip away from Bigolino to Treviso where he was one of a guard of honour to greet Mussolini. He remembered being patted on the head by Mussolini. In later life, Johnny recognised the indoctrination of children about fascism but at the time, he felt it a  privilege to be patted on the head by this man.

 Johnny’s family – decision to migrate in 1940
In his interview, Johnny explained that his parents felt they had no other choice but to leave Italy because of the difficult circumstances that resulted from being anti-fascist. The family finally left Bigolino and arrived in Adelaide in February 1940.

First years in Adelaide
Johnny spent three years at school at St Mary’s Dominican Convent, Franklin Street and because he could not speak English, he was put into a class three years below the grade he had completed in Italy. Initially he had the support of a cousin in the same class but by the second year, he had acquired the language and he came third in his class.

Experience of the war years

It was difficult to be an Italian in Australia after Italy declared its allegiance to Germany in June 1940 just four months after the Tormena family arrived in Adelaide.

 

He spoke about this experience in his interview and said that he felt self-conscious about being Italian:

Then there was a bit of hostility… because we were not just immigrants by that time; we were ‘aliens’ and so they (students at school) had another title – I didn’t know what it meant but I knew that they meant to hurt your feelings and called me ‘the little dagoe’. (p10)

Johnny also recalled the limitations of movement that were imposed on Italians and other ‘enemy aliens’ during the war:

During the War we were not allowed to outside the square mile of Adelaide unless you had a permit from the police… The permit would only be for the one day and it was always on a Sunday for us that Mum wanted to go down and see her sister. So we used to go the police station and even me at my age, 12, 13, 14 we had to be finger-printed and signed and we had to be back in the square mile of Adelaide by the end of the day.(p 28/29)

 The Tormenas lived in rooms in Waymouth Street in the west of the City of Adelaide for about ten years in a house that was owned by the Cescato family who ran a boarding house. Severina’s brother Beppi, his wife, Bruna, and their first child, Valeria, lived with the Tormenas for some time.

In 1950, the Tormena family experienced great sadness when Galliano died after a short illness. In 1951, they took an important step and bought a house together and Galliano’s sister, Rosa, and her daughter Anna Maria, also lived with them there for a time.

 Working life

Johnny began working at 16 years of age. One of his early jobs was cleaning a picture theatre at night. He recalled that the theatres were full of American soldiers during the war years. He worked in a department store, Foy and Gibson’s for 14 years and became an experienced display manager and was respected for his creative window displays.

 He made a visit to Italy in 1956 and also worked in London in a picture theatre for some months. He loved staying in Bigolino reconnecting with relatives and school friends. He returned to Adelaide and in 1957, opened a coffee lounge with a friend which they called Las Vegas. It became very popular but after four years of working seven days a week, they decided to close.

 A new opportunity emerged in 1960 – a position at John Martin’s department store –where he remained until 1988.  At first, Johnny was in charge of displays for 34 windows. He eventually became the Merchandise Presentation Director for John Martin’s in charge of five stores with a staff of 73 people. He travelled overseas with buyers to review the designs and displays of prestigious department stores in other countries such as France, Sweden, Norway, Germany, America and Japan. He also worked on promoting merchandise for other countries. Johnny was away on one trip for 11 weeks meeting retail associations, visiting large department stores and gathering new ideas to bring back to John Martin’s.

Johnny was loved and widely respected by his colleagues at John Martin’s. Some of the men who worked with him continued to meet with him socially over many years. Some attended his 97th birthday party last November.

 

Italian heritage
Johnny had a large extended family with many cousins and he enjoyed social life in Adelaide with them as a young man.

In his interview, he reflected on the balance of being Italian and Australian : I’m equally as proud of my Italian heritage as I am of being in Australia because when I go to Italy, I keep on talking about Australia. “You are talking about Australia, go back!” (p 79/80)

Although Johnny said he was “not a club man”, he joined the Veneto Club as a Foundation member in 1972 and he also joined the Adelaide chapter of the Trevisani nel Mondo, a world-wide association for people with origins in the province of Treviso.

 

A long life

Johnny’s life has been rich and full. In the last years, even with the challenges of dementia, he remembered phases of his life – his love of his family and relatives, enjoyment of friends, the wonder of films, the satisfaction of his working life at John Martin’s, delight in his garden, passion for travel and particularly his deep connections to his beloved Bigolino.

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All photos from the Tormena family albums, apart from the final one.

Madeleine Regan
20 April 2025

Families often maintain food traditions especially at Easter and Christmas. Recipes and rituals are handed down and have meaning for successive generations. Five years ago, Christine Rebellato nee Mattiazzo wrote a blog about her  family tradition of sharing meals on Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Christine has kindly agreed for her blog to be re-posted
in anticipation of preparing for this Easter. She will serve polenta and baccalà and bigoli in salsa at an Easter gathering for the extended Mattiazzo family.

I take this opportunity to wish you all a happy Easter and celebrations with your families. Buona pasqua!

The image above shows the meal of polenta and baccalà and other dishes on Easter Sunday, 2012, shared with the family
at the home of Christine and Peter Rebellato.
L-R: Alice, Peter, Oscar, Modesto Rossetto, Julian, Louisa.

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I note the passing of Johnny Tormena who died today at the age of 97 years. Johnny recorded an interview for the Veneto market gardeners’ oral history project in 2012.

Madeleine Regan
6^th April 2025

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Polenta e Baccalà – More than a meal

Our mother and father, Virginia Santin and Oscar Mattiazzo migrated to Australia from the Veneto region in the mid 1930s as children, aged 8 and 11. As their children, we three sisters, Christine, Helen and Vicki, grew up knowing about baccalà, which for our family, conjures up memories of Easter.

We call the dehydrated un-salted stockfish, probably cod, found in continental shops, baccalà. The drying of food is the world’s oldest known preservation method, as dried fish has a storage life of several years. Stockfish is exported from Norway. Confusingly in the Veneto, stockfish (stoccafisso) tends to be called Baccalà. In most of Italy and in standard Italian, baccalà is the name given to salted cod.

Our family associated baccalà with Easter Sunday. On Good Friday it was tradition for us to eat sparingly and our traditional dish was bigoli in salsa which was thick spaghetti called bigoli or bigoi in dialect. The salsa is made by cooking down salt-cured anchovies, onion, parsley and pepper. Although simple, it was my dad, Oscar Mattiazzo’s favourite pasta dish.

Many Veneto families in Australia cook baccalà at other times of the year, some on Good Friday or Christmas Eve or Christmas Day or other special occasions.

As mentioned, our family only ate the traditional polenta e baccalà on Easter Sunday. There was one exception, Christmas 1990, a month before our mother, Virginia died.

For that particular Christmas it was mum’s wish to cook up a feast, all under her direction. Mum wanted to have many traditional dishes, including polenta e baccalà. Mum directed and dictated the recipes to dad, and we cooked. We still have that special little notebook.

“Nonna Virginia’s Baccalà” recipe has been slightly modified over the 30 years we have been cooking it, without mum since 1991 and with dad until 2017.  Mum’s recipe seems to be loosely based on baccalà alla Vicentina.

The baccalà preparation and cooking is a ritual –  buying, soaking to re-hydrate the fish, changing  the water, gentle beating, de-boning, cooking and serving with polenta. Dad for many years, as when mum was alive, would soak and prep the baccalà. My husband, Peter Rebellato, who migrated with his family from the Veneto when he was 4, has taken over that role. Peter grew up watching his father, Rino, prep the baccalà which his mother Livia cooked and their family ate once a year as a special winter meal. The ritual serves to keep family memories, my parents and Peter’s parents, all who are no longer with us, alive in our minds and in our stories.

Over the years, Easter time has been a time for our family to be together, to enjoy each other’s company, a time to keep our traditions, a time to enjoy food with a focus on keeping our loved ones alive.

Many families have dishes which connect them to the past, to a place, to an experience. Polenta e baccalà is one of those dishes for us – the family of Virginia Santin and Oscar Mattiazzo.
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Christine Rebellato nee Mattiazzo
5 April 2020

All photos supplied by Christine.