Author: Madeleine Regan

Last week in Adelaide we had a heatwave with some extremely hot days – and warm nights – before a cool change brought relief. We even had some rain – the first good amount for several months. The weather made me think of the Veneto market gardeners who were establishing their market gardens in the area they called Lockleys between the wars.

The sons and daughters who grew up in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s – and who have been interviewed for the oral history project – recalled the challenges of the hot weather. They remembered the need for their parents to start work in the market gardens even earlier when days were hot. They recalled the heat of houses which were often corrugated iron structures in the early days without the comfort of air conditioning. Some remembered going to the beach with other Veneto families.

It’s interesting to discover what people did to get some respite from the heat. The following excerpts from interviews provide insight into how the Veneto families managed the Adelaide summers. It was fortunate that the market gardeners lived about 4.5 kilometres from the beach which meant that it was an easy trip. They had a favourite place for the Veneto group to congregate.

Keeping cool on the market gardens
Johnny Marchioro spoke about the unusual way that his parents kept cool on hot days on their market garden on Frogmore Road in the 1940s:

 

Dad had a bore and a well that when it was real hot they used to go and cool down in this well … we had bore water for the glasshouses. The well was about a four-foot hole about twenty foot deep and it was padded up with timber that went down there … I don’t know how they got that done back in the ‘30s.

 Johnny Marchioro, OH 872/1, p 23.

 

 

Taking the children
Anna Santin nee Mattiazzo worked with her husband, Vito and his brothers, Lui and Romildo and their wives Rosina and Clara on their market garden on Frogmore Road. Anna spoke about taking her son, Dean and nieces and nephews to the beach at Henley or Grange:

We used to take the kids there – there was no air-conditioning in the house those days – we used to take the children when it was really hot, for the kids to … they used to enjoy the beach. We used to go under the jetty.

Anna Santin, OH 872/24, 3 April 2013, p 27.

Remembering the beach

Frankie Ballestrin remembers summer days at the beach as a child and spending the days under the jetty.

And in the summer – Dad used to grow tomatoes, and around the Christmas time when it was too hot and we were on school holidays – we used to be down the beach all the time, every day, under the jetty there. And all the group round here, cousins and aunties and uncles and friends, the whole mob of us used to go down the beach and pass the day away that way, because it was very hot in those years and no air-conditioning and, you know, all in tin shacks; I mean there was no insulation, no nothing, and like an oven.

Frankie Ballestrin OH 8727, 12 December 2008, p 34.

Families meeting at Henley Beach
Dino Piovesan also had memories of being a child and spending time at Henley Beach with his family and other Veneto families:

Henley Beach, and that’s where Mum liked to go, because in the very hot weather Dad would drive us down in the Bedford truck, and Mum would simply sit under the jetty, and we kids would do our thing as much as we could in the sand and the surf … Dad would pick us up later in the day, the later the better on the very hot days, and I can remember Mum saying, Stay under the jetty, stay under the jetty away from the sun or you’ll get sunburn. Many a time I can remember, oh, getting severely sunburnt and suffering for it … usually there were three or four families that met there on the very hot days

Dino Piovesan OH 872/17, 23 September, 2011, p 12

 Spending the whole day …
Assunta remembers the way the whole Tonellato family would go to Henley Beach:

We used to go, when I was little I remember every summer, because it was school holidays, we’d go down the beach, Henley Beach, it was in those days, and Mum would pack a roast chicken and we’d all sit under the jetty. And this is like when I was a teenager and was still going to school, and we’d spend the whole day at the beach because in those days we didn’t have air-conditioning, and my Uncle and the boys, they’d work in the garden and then at night they’d come down to the beach –

And we’d all sit with a blanket eating our roast chickens, and a whole lot of the families would meet under this jetty because that’s where all the ladies would go with their children when it was hot, you know. And then the men, when they’d finished work, would just come there and, you know, at night and have their supper, and I remember that Henley Beach was, under the jetty, was all Italians in those days.

Assunta Giovannini nee Tonellato, OH 872/6, 15 July 2010, p 13,14.

Seeing the beach for the first time
Johnny Tormena was 12 years old when he and his parents and sister arrived in Adelaide in 1939. The family lived in the city and had a large group of relatives including the Rebuli family who were market gardeners on Frogmore Road. In his interview Johnny reminisced about his excitement of actually seeing the beach with his relatives:

Now that was another luxury that I thought was fantastic that I had never seen the sea until — I can’t even remember seeing the sea in a book. I knew that Venice was all in the sea but I had never had seen I could only imagine it, I always thought the sea would have an end to it, you know — And to live here and knowing that we were on the coast and people used to go to the beach every weekend and all of that, to me, was luxury plus. And we used to have a pushbike that we would go down on…, a group of us from the city.

Johnny Tormena, OH 872/18, 25 May 2012, p 22

 

The weather is looking much cooler in Adelaide for the week ahead, and the fierce heat of last week is almost forgotten …

Madeleine Regan
26 February 2023

Following the previous blog about the changes in the landscape, this one focuses on maps and historical aerial photos which provide a visual history of the area where the market gardens were located north of the River Torrens until the early 1980s.

In 2007 I saw the first map of the Veneto market garden area in Kidman Park and Flinders Park where the Veneto families farmed. I went to Bolivar to meet Johnny and Eleonora Marchioro on their market garden. Johnny drew a map to indicate where his father and mother, Vittorio and Angelina, had their market garden on Frogmore Road until 1948 when the family moved across the river to White Avenue Lockleys and established their market garden there.

Johnny’s mud map showed the locations of the market gardens worked by other Veneto families on Frogmore Road when he was growing up. He pointed out the Piovesan’s, Tonellato’s, Santin’s, and Antonio and Romilda Ballestrin and the Zalunardo’s on Grange Road. The Berno families were on Valetta Road and Narciso and Maria Ballestrin were on the corner of Valetta Road and Findon Road before Nico and Delia Zampin lived there. Other Ballestrin families worked farms near Findon Road in Flinders Park. There were other families farming in the area and Johnny marked them on the map; Johnny identified other Italians and Anglo Australian families who were market gardeners inn the area and marked on the map, Fazzalari’s, Ursini’s, and on Valetta Road, Ballantyne’s and West’s.

All this was new information for me because I did not know much about this history of the market gardens in the western suburbs of Adelaide and the families who had migrated from the Veneto region. Other Italians like the Recchi, the De Pasquale and Mercurio families had market gardens, and there was also a long history of Chinese men who had vegetable gardens in the area.

The importance of the River Torrens
One of the significant features of all the photos is the River Torrens shown at the bottom. While it was an important source of water, early market gardeners were affected by repeated floods which ruined crops. Ironically, flooding in previous times produced the deposits of rich alluvial soil which the area so productive for growers. Rae Ballantyne’s family owned about seven and a half acres on Findon Road just near the bridge. He had been allocated the land in 1923 after serving in the Army during World War I. Rae spoke about the challenges of living near the River Torrens:

Dad told me that the first year when he moved in, he got flooded out seven times that year … The river was very narrow and full of trees and shrubs I think that is why it got flooded all the time because it just got blocked up with rubbish …

(Rae Ballantyne, OH 872/21, 25 August 2012, 8).

In the late 1930s, the Government diverted the course of the river, widened it and made a channel, ‘Breakout Creek’ to create a sea outlet.

 

 

 

Frankie Ballestrin remembers that his father talked about the modification of the River Torrens which they remembered:

I know that our people were saying that it was hand-built and with draglines and horses and scoops, done in those years … after that they cleaned it out, you see.  When the glasshouses were on it wasn’t flooding anymore.

(Frankie Ballestrin OH 872/7, 12 December 2008, 19, 16)

The rich alluvial soil was an advantage of the River Torrens flood plain and  the market gardeners grew celery close to the river because it was sandy and good loam. Further away from the river, other crops were grown and the market gardeners erected glasshouses so they could grow tomato crops and beans as well crops that needed open land like potatoes and cauliflowers or bunched vegetables such as onions and carrots.

Aerial photos
The City of Charles Sturt provided some aerial photos of the area that give a clear picture of the way that land was used through the decades.

Early photos showed the large area in the now Kidman Park and Flinders Park suburbs used as market gardens and broad acre crops. It is striking to see the few houses dotted around the area amid the flat cultivated land. In the 1930s the area was a mix of landholdings of crops, dairy farms and market gardens of varying sizes and some orchards. The first aerial view was taken in 1935, a time when most of the Veneto families had leased land and were establishing their market gardens in the difficult years of the Depression.

 

 

Later photos showed the changes in the area.
For example, a photo taken in 1979 shows that land used as market gardens has decreased in favour of housing developments. And the photo taken in 2011 is a contrast again. The area is a densely populated inner suburb of Adelaide with some green areas and commercial locations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At events for the Veneto market gardener families and friends, people have always been interested in looking at maps of the area and the location of the market gardens in the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s. There is nostalgia when people recall the area, the common purpose of growing vegetables for the commercial market and the sense of community particularly for the Veneto group who had made the area they called ‘Lockleys’ the place of settlement in Australia and their second home.

 

Madeleine Regan
12 February 2023

 

 

Big changes are occurring in an area in the western suburbs of Adelaide where several Veneto families once had their market gardens.

 

At present, 12.6 hectares of land along Findon Road between Valetta Road and the River Torrens is being prepared for a large housing development. From the 1960s, this site accommodated the former warehouse for goods that were distributed to supermarkets across South Australia. In June 2021, the Metcash food distribution warehouse moved to another area in Adelaide.

 

 

If you drive past the site now, you’ll see a vast area of demolition.

 

The history of the area
There have been three major changes to the use of this particular land in Kidman Park since it was first inhabited by the First Nations population of the area. They had used the river (Karawirra Parri) and its banks as a source of water, food, shelter and cultural practices for thousands of years.  In the 1830s English settlers developed broad acre farms near the River Torrens in the Lockleys Fulham area. From at least the 1890s, the land has been continually subdivided. Land title records show that a property of 150 acres had been divided into smaller parcels in 1894 by a single landowner. Chinese men had leased small plots of land from around this time and grew a range of vegetables, mainly green-leafed vegetables for sale at market.

The area used as market gardens
By the 1930s when the veneti took up leases, the area was a mix of large landholdings of crops such as lucerne, dairy farms, small intensive vegetable farms and orchards. At that time, apart from the colonial families, smaller owners included returned soldiers who had been allocated land after the First World War. Italians from other regions including Campania and Calabria worked market gardens in the same area.

The Veneto families whose stories have been recorded in the Veneto market gardeners’ oral history project were able to buy the properties that they had leased and they cultivated a range of vegetables – celery, potatoes, cauliflowers, cabbages, lettuces, spinach and other greens, and in glasshouses, tomatoes and beans.

The market gardeners who worked that land were: the Ballantyne family, Daminato family, Narciso and Maria Ballestrin, Nico and Delia Zampin, the West family, Yick Kee, Gino and Jean Berno, the Santin families, Albert and Elvira Berno, Pietro and Antonietta Berno.

When the market gardener families sold their properties in the 1960s, the land was subdivided for housing and some commercial use like the food distribution warehouse. In the following photo, it is possible to see that market gardens still existed when the Kidman Park Girls Technical High School was built in 1964.

Changes to the area
People interviewed for the Veneto market gardeners’ oral history project have seen enormous changes in the Findon Road – Valetta Road site. It has moved from being a semi-rural area with large market garden properties with small number of houses on properties, to a neighbourhood subdivided and developed in 1960s – a suburb with single dwellings and gardens and new schools to the existence of the large food distribution warehouse. Within the next few years, the area will have changed again –  a development with medium to high density living and some commercial use on the land that had previously been cultivated by the market gardeners.

Plans for the future
In the initial draft Master Plan for 410-450 Findon Road, Kidman Park, created by Fairland, a residential developer in South Australia and Queensland, the rezoning plan would result in up to 400 residences on the site. The draft concept plans were for mixed use with higher density residential development with some homes and higher density dwellings in townhouses up to a maximum height of five storeys in one area. Some shops, commercial services and a child care centre were also part of the plan.

After a two-month period of consultation in 2022, it was proposed that building heights be limited to a maximum of four storeys and placement of two and three level buildings be modified.

Telling the stories
Photos and plans tell stories about a parcel of land and record changes that occur over many years and several generations. On this site which was influenced by the River Torrens, transformations have created layers of history. The oral histories of the generation who were raised in families on the land near Findon Road and Valetta Road offer vivid accounts of the market gardener community that cultivated vegetables for the South Australian and Victorian markets. Two Veneto families had had their market gardens on the corner of Findon Road and Valetta Road, Maria and Narciso Ballestrin, followed by Nico and Delia Zampin.

Jimmy Ballestrin remembers growing up on that land with his parents, Narciso and Maria, his siblings, Lina, Silvano and Norina and the hard work of the whole family in the market gardens:

My mother and father both worked the glasshouses, probably I’d like to say equal, but maybe not quite equal because my mother would have to then go and cook and do all the household duties. Yes, we were taught that we had to help, from a young age, and thinking back on it, we worked very hard as kids, but thought nothing of it because all my friends did exactly the same, and I didn’t hear any of them complain.

We didn’t seem to think it was a chore at all, it was just something that was done.

(Jimmy Ballestrin, OH 872/15, 6 June 2011)

References:
Engagement Report by the City of Charles Sturt, City of Charles Sturt Kidman Park Residential and Mixed Use Code Amendment (Part-Privately Funded)
August 2022 (Please note this document is over 400 pages.)  https://www.charlessturt.sa.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0029/1193717/Item-4.20-Appendix-2-Engagement-Report-Kidman-Park.pdf

Planning SA – Fairland Master Plan for 410-450 Findon Road, Kidman Park Master Plan (no date) https://plan.sa.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/1026582/Kidman_Park_Residential_and_Mixed_Use_CA_-_Attachment_J.PDF

 

Madeleine Regan
29 January 2023