I began my oral history project in 2007 and recorded first interviews in 2008. I began the project because Johnny Marchioro gave me lots of information about the community of Veneto market gardeners who settled in Lockleys in the 1930s. After I interviewed Bruno Piovesan, Mary and Albert Tonellato and Frankie Ballestrin. I was interested to learn about the group of Veneto market gardeners and how they lived and worked at Lockleys. Since 2008 I have gathered 65 interviews, including some recorded in the Veneto region. The recordings are held in the State Library of South Australia – and you can listen to most of them on this website.
As many of you know, I have written a book about the Veneto market gardeners in Lockleys. It has finally been published by Australian National University (ANU) Press.
The title is “’I buy this piece of ground of here’: An Italian market-gardener community in Adelaide 1920s – 1970s.”
The words were spoken by Vittorio Marchioro who had arrived from Malo in 1927. He was interviewed with his wife, Angelina, in the 1980s and Vittorio proudly stated that he had been able to buy the land and that he had security and a settled life in Lockleys as a market gardener.
The cover
On the cover are Costantina and Giovanni Santin in front of their truck and the house they lived in with their three sons and a daughter. Giovanni was the eldest of the Veneto men who arrived in the 1920s. Costantina and Lui, Vito, Romildo and Virginia joined him in 1935.
The photo on the cover of the book was taken in the mid 1940s on Valetta Road where the family sub-leased land from the Berno brothers. In 1950 the Santins, including Lui and his wife Rosina Tonellato and Vito and his wife, Anna Mattiazzo, moved to Frogmore Road in 1950 where the family had bought land with an old house.
What’s the book about?
‘I buy this piece of ground here’ is a group biography that examines the lives and work of Veneto families whose members first arrived in Australia in the 1920s. They formed a new community and identity as market gardeners in what was then the outer suburbs in the west of Adelaide.
The book investigates the settlement of the group of Veneti in a period of Australian migration history that is often overlooked in favour of post-World War II studies of mass migration and multiculturalism.
Nine chapters
In each of the nine chapters, there are excerpts from the oral history interviews. These extracts give fascinating information about the experience of different families and help build the history of the Veneto community of market gardeners.
Chapter one: Building a group biography – the focus is on the formation of the community of Veneto market gardeners, how I approached the study and used oral history interviews to record the memories of the sons and daughters of the first generation and other relatives.
Chapter two: Beginnings in Adelaide – explores the challenges that the first generation experienced before they could lease land at ‘Lockleys’, the marriages and settling down to achieve ‘sistemazione’ with family.
Chapter three: Attachment to land – examines the contadino (peasant farmer) motivation to work the land and how this translated to Lockleys where they became land owners.
Chapter four: Family life and labour – outlines the involvement of the whole family in the work on the market gardeners” husbands, wives and children.
Photo supplied by the Zampin family.
Chapter five: Life within the community – focuses on how the Veneto market gardener families supported each other and built a strong community or a paese, the role of the Catholic Church in the lives of families.
Chapter six: Community in times of crisis – describes the challenges of the war years, the experience of being ‘enemy aliens’ and the difficulties that Italian people faced in Australia after Italy joined with Germany.
Chapter seven: Pathways – 1.5 and second generation – provides details about the employment choices the men and women who had either arrived as children with their parents or who were born in Australia – and differences in the two younger generations.
Chapter eight: Transforming the paese- spells out the changes as families sold their market gardens; ageing of the first generation and the arrival of post Second World Veneti.
Chapter nine: Continuity of the paese – explains how members of the second and third generations have maintained their identity as part of the Veneto market gardener community, the website and connections with relatives in the Veneto region.
Thanks to the people interviewed
I am grateful to all the people who gave their time to be interviewed and who told the stories of their parents and grandparents’ migration and settlement. I am also thankful to the families who have given permission for me to use the beautiful photos that are used in the book. We are fortunate that it was possible to document the history of the Veneto market gardener community at Lockleys from the 1930s to the 1970s.
Book launch
I have organised a book launch for 19th July at Mater Christi hall, Seaton – you’ll see the details on the invitation. Books will not be sold at the launch.
How to access the book – online
The book will not be available in bookshops. It has been published by ANU Press as an e-book. It can be downloaded for free and read on a computer or a tablet. You can click on this link to download the book: http://doi.org/10.22459/IBPGH.2025
When you open the page, you’ll see that there are various formats you can select to download the document. One option with the pdf format is to download each chapter.
If you download the book, you’ll find sound files that you can access at the beginning of each chapter. The sound files are brief extracts from oral history interviews that I have recorded with sons and daughters of the first generation of market gardeners or the next generation or other relatives. The brief sound files introduce the themes of the chapters. I wanted to include sound files in the online version of the book so that people who read the book would get the idea that oral history was a vital part of my writing the history of the Veneto market gardener community.
Purchasing the book
Scanning the QR code on the flyer provided by ANU Press will entitle purchasers to a 20% discount. (If you hold your phone close enough to the code, you will activate it.) Orders will be delivered within two weeks.
Please contact me if you would like to have your own flyer with the QR code.
Madeleine Regan
1 June 2025