In 1943, Luigina Ballestrin married Eugenio Zalunardo in Adelaide.
In the image above, the large Ballestrin family is present for the portrait – Luigina’s mother and brothers and sisters-in-law and nephews. Eugenio did not have family in Adelaide. The bride and groom and attendants, (Rosina Tonellato for Luigina, and Luigi Santin for Eugenio), are all dressed in fine clothes which must have been a challenge to acquire during the war years when rationing extended to the purchase of fabric and clothing. It would have been a happy occasion for the couple and for members of the families – Tonellato and Santin – who were involved in the wedding party. While Luigina had a large family in Adelaide, Eugenio did not have relatives but he had the network of the Veneto market gardener community in the area they called Lockleys.
The challenges of the war years
The war years were difficult for Italian people (and others in Australia whose countries were fighting against the Allies) especially after Italy joined Germany against the Allies in June 1940. Italians were described officially as “enemy aliens” and were prevented from moving from their home suburb to another without written permission. They could not buy property and applications for naturalisation were brought to a standstill. Some of the Ballestrin relatives were fined for not obtaining written authority to travel away from their suburb. Several Veneto men, including some Ballestrin relatives in the wedding photo, were conscripted to work for the Australian civilian force (the Allied Works Council) that assisted the war effort in remote places. They had to leave their market gardens in the hands of their wives and children.
The Australian Government imposed strict regulations that restricted the choices (and dignity) of Italian people and other enemy aliens and strengthened racist attitudes in the wider community. However, most of the Veneto market gardeners had contracts with the Australian Army to grow vegetables during the war. In this way, they were involved in the war effort.
Luigina Ballestrin
Luigina who was from Vallà di Riese in the province of Treviso had arrived in Adelaide with her mother Santa Agata in April 1939. They were reunited with Luigina’s brothers and families, Antonio, Isidoro, Ermenegildo and Narcisio and their cousin Giuseppe and his wife, Cesira and family. Luigina and her mother lived with her Uncle Isidoro and Auntie Gina. Before she married, Luigina would have worked in the market gardens for her uncle and aunt who had 15 acres and 17 glasshouses at Flinders Park.
Eugenio Zalunardo
Eugenio was born in Castelcucco in 1905 in the province of Treviso. Like most of the other Veneto market gardeners, he arrived in Adelaide in 1927. He was 22 years old and spent more than seven years in rural South Australia mostly as a farmhand. He worked for four years on Kangaroo Island, two years on Eyre Peninsula which was more than a day’s travel from Adelaide and fourteen months at Halidon, 140 kilometres east of Adelaide working for a fellow Veneto, Tarcisio Bernardi who had a contract for building roads in the Mallee area of SA.
When he applied for naturalisation in 1933, Eugenio was unemployed and living in a boarding house in the city of Adelaide. By 1937 he had leased land on the southern side of Grange Road, St James Park for his market garden.[1]
Eugenio’s land was close to other veneti who were also settling there – it bordered the property of the Tonellato family. Eugenio grew tomatoes and beans in glasshouses and outside, he worked carrots, potatoes, lettuces and artichokes. When Eugenio married Luigina, she worked in the market garden too. In the early 1950s, they bought the land that they leased on Grange Road, Kidman Park.
Luigina and Eugenio
The couple had two children – Noemi was born in 1947 and Renato, in 1958. Noemi’s godparents were Luigi and Rosina (nee Tonellato) Santin who had been Luigina and Eugenio’s attendants for their wedding. This close relationship of godparents created the comare and compare roles – a tradition in Veneto families. Noemi worked in the market garden from a young age and also assisted her mother who was ill for several years before she died in 1965 at the age of 49 years.
In her interview Noemi remembered working in the market garden and refers to the task of observing the weather which was part of the role of looking after 25 glasshouses:
No homework. No homework. And did what had to be done at home, grading tomatoes, putting papers in half boxes … Well, depends what the weather was like. If it was nice weather, you’d leave them [glasshouses] open. If it was cold, you used to shut the doors, you went around the whole 25 of them
and closed all the doors.
(Noemi Campagnolo nee Zalunardo, OH 872/29, 20 March 2014)
When Noemi left school at 15 years, she worked with her father in the market garden until she married Tiziano Campagnolo in 1969.
Eugenio sold the land on Grange Road shortly after and lived in Findon. He died in 1972.
You can read a short biography of the Zalunardo family on the website:
[1] Information gathered from Eugenio’s naturalisation papers in the National Archives of Australia – NAA: A446, 1955/50846.
All photos supplied by Noemi Campagnolo nee Zalunardo.
Madeleine Regan
25 August 2024