Author: Madeleine Regan

In this blog, you’ll read about two annual Christmas traditions – the presepe or nativity setting  created by Irene Zampin in Caselle di Altivole in the province of Treviso – and a community tradition in Adelaide
organised by the Trevisani nel Mondo.

In the view of Irene’s presepe above, pavers lead the way to the manger.

My presepe – 2024

For me November is a sad month because the first cold days show up and it is when I mostly get bored. The days become dark very early in the evening and the thermal changes bring colds and flus. To remove this melancholy, I have to find something that keeps me busy so I begin my research for some hints of how I could create my presepe.

Since I’m rather an impulsive person, it doesn’t take me long to decide how to proceed with it.

When I have gathered all I need to set it up, the fun begins with excitement.

Not far from home, there is a hardware store where the owners allow me to choose all the cardboard boxes I need to make my presepe, at no cost.  If you have some imagination, it isn’t difficult to create one with recycled material such as the one I made. I used cardboard boxes for the houses, egg cartons to make the layer of bricks and some cloth to put on the washing cord. The only expense I had this year was for the green fake lawn that I bought for the ground. The statues are recycled every year.

As you can see, the presepe is made with 4 cardboard boxes, they are easy to set up. Each one represents a scene. The main part of the presepe represents the nativity of Jesus which is in a stable near luxurious houses. To keep the holy family warm in the stable, there are the ox and the donkey that brought Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem.

Every scene took me about 4 to 5 hours.  With the help of the precious hot glue, I assembled the 4 sceneries together so I must say that it took me around 20 hours to complete the presepe.  Since I am not a patient person, when I start something I like to finish it quickly, but not always things turn out as I wish.

 

I love building up the presepe; the only thing that bothers me is putting in the lights because the electrical wires often get tangled when passing through each box.

 

 

 

I made my first presepe in 2016 when my grandsons asked for it. This year Mario is 15 and Tommaso is 13 years old and they help me. To involve my grandsons, I make them create the old look of the houses. Mario tore up some paper from the carboard and painted a light layer of white on the walls while Tommaso created the rooftop where there is the washing line. I still glue all the statues to the floor because both of them love teasing me by changing the positions of the statues.

Since I have lots of friends that pass by to see my presepe, I keep it out for 6 weeks; 2 weeks more than the usual month (8th of December till the 6th of January). Of course, when they are here, we have a cup of coffee or tea.

You can play a short video (1 minute, 26 seconds) taken by Irene that shows the features of the presepe.

Every year, I participate in a program of one of our regional TV channels which makes an exhibition of homemade presepi.

Irene Zampin
15 December 2024

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 The Christmas picnic organised by the Trevisani nel Mondo, Adelaide

For 42 years, the Trevisani nel Mondo Association in Adelaide has organised a Christmas picnic for members and friends. The Trevisani nel Mondo is an international not-for-profit association that represents people and their descendants who migrated from the province of Treviso. Local chapters exist around Australia – and the world.

Each year the Trevisani nel Mondo in Adelaide organise a series of gatherings beginning with the Annual General Meeting in February. A Committee, currently consisting of 13 people, organises the events and other groups of volunteers – including a member who is over 90 years – assist with preparation of food and hospitality.

The first large social gathering is the autumn picnic in March. In May, members attend a lunch and the June Castagne or Chestnut event is very popular with attendees who take home packets of roasted chestnuts. In August the Trevisani commemorate Pope Pius X who was born in Riese, a village in the province of Treviso. He was elected Pope in August 1903 and the lunch brings together many people with connections to Riese Pio X. The Christmas picnic is the most popular event in the Adelaide chapter of the Trevisani nel Mondo calendar.

The 2024 picnic was held on 1st December. About 400 people attended including young children who welcomed Father Christmas (Peter Rebellato) who made an entrance and moved around the groups who enjoyed the shade at Sunnybrae Farm, Regency Park.

 

 

 

 

 

Madeleine Regan with assistance from Anna Mechis nee Rebellato.

Photos by Chris Rebellato nee Mattiazzo.

15 December 2024

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Happy Christmas. Buon natale.

 

This is the second of a two-part story about  Nives and Duilio Caon. Part 2 covers the life of Nives Caon nee Cescato, beginning life in her mother’s boarding house and balancing family with the building business in partnership with Duilio and enjoying opportunities to experience life.

The image above shows the Cescato family, Clorinda seated between Nives and Guido, and Angelo standing on the right. The others are a group of friends and this was taken at the Cescato boarding house about 1938.

Nives Cescato was born on the first floor of a house in the west end of Adelaide on 7th March 1932, the daughter of Angelo Cescato and Clorinda Balestrin. An older brother, Guido, was four years older, and a sister, Linda, was born 15 years after Nives.

Arrival of Nives’ parents 1928
Angelo Cescato (1905 – 1985) was born in San Vito di Altivole and Clorinda (1907 – 1986) had been born in Spineda, about a kilometre away.

Angelo and Clorinda had migrated to Adelaide in January 1928 and Nives thinks it was partly as a result of the sadness of her mother’s loss of twin daughters – one had been born dead and the other lived for a short time. There was also the incentive of family reunion because Clorinda’s father, Federico Balestrin, a widower, was already living in Adelaide with his four daughters and two sons who had migrated after Clorinda and Angelo’s wedding in 1927. A third son joined the family in 1928.

For a time, Nives’ father worked for Chinese market gardeners at Richmond, not far from the City and this gave him skills to start his own garden with the help of Clorinda after Nives was born. However, the Depression years were tough for market gardeners and the venture was not successful. Angelo returned to work for the Chinese gardeners and Clorinda helped her sister, Elena, in a boarding house she was running with their father, Federico, in Waymouth Street. Later Angelo worked in a factory and during the Second World War, was employed in a munitions factory.

The vision of the future
In the 1930s, Clorinda and Angelo were young migrants who wanted to create a better life at a particularly challenging economic period. Clorinda had a vision of developing a business that would enable her to work and assist the family financially. She also wanted to provide opportunities for her children in secondary schooling which she had not been able to access in Italy. The experience of assisting her sister in the boarding house prompted Clorinda to start her own sometime in the late 1930s.

The boarding house at  Waymouth Street
In a document that Nives wrote for her grandchildren so that they would know more about her early life, she explained her mother’s role in the boarding house:

She was like a mother to them. She did all the work herself, making the beds, cleaning, washing, ironing and of course, cooking for them… It was nothing for her to be still up at 1am and then up again at 5:30 am to get breakfast for her husband and boarders… One thing I remember well. We lived in a multicultural pocket. We had Australian, Greek, Lebanese, Aboriginal, Maltese, Arab, and of course, Italian families as neighbours and I do not remember any racist remarks thrown around. Everyone got on with everyone.

Approximately 13 men lived in the boarding house in six bedrooms  spread over two buildings. While the majority were Italian, Nives remembered Hungarian and men from Baltic countries. The men became like members of the Cescato family and everyone ate the evening meal together. The children served the meals and washed up.

Nives and Guido had their allocated jobs before school – Nives cleaned the bathrooms and helped making cut lunches for the men. Guido made beds and also assisted with lunches. Both of them washed breakfast dishes.

On the property, Nives’ father had a vegetable garden and raised chickens and Nives’ mother grew flowers which were always in the boarding house. The men who lived in the boarding house became like family members. Clorinda and Angelo cared for the boarders and demonstrated kindness and respect and their children had opportunities to understand difference and what it meant to be inclusive of others. Nives remembered that she and Guido helped the men with taxation and sponsorship forms when they wanted to bring members of their family to Australia.

Surgery at 8 years and a difficult outcome

When she was 8 years old, Nives had an operation on her mastoid in her inner ear and as she said, “the surgery went horribly wrong … a facial nerve was cut resulting in total deafness in the right ear, and my face slipped to one side.” The surgeon removed her right eardrum as a life-saving intervention. Nives remembered her mother stayed with her all day and night for the whole time she was in hospital. It was a challenge for a young girl to experience the change in her appearance and one of her teachers made sure that her classmates understood the circumstances.

Schooling
Nives loved school at St Marys Dominican Convent in Franklin Street – a couple of streets away. Her parents were involved with the school and particularly on Sports Days. After completing primary school her father thought it was time for Nives to get a job because in the Italian tradition, education for daughters beyond primary years was not considered important since they would marry and there would be no need for schooling. Her mother understood the value of education for her children and made sure that Nives completed four years of secondary school.

Nives was popular at school, involved in sport, was captain of the netball (now basketball) team and became Head Prefect. The friendships she made at school have continued through the years and Nives has organised regular gatherings of the ‘St Marys’ girls’ which sometimes included the nuns who had taught them.

 

When Nives was still at school, she met Duilio Caon who was boarding with his uncle in the next street. The two families spent time together and although Nives was 16 and Duilio was 20, they developed a friendship.

 

 

Teaching career
Nives had always wanted to be a teacher but when she left school, was just a few days too young to enrol in Teachers College. Fortunately, there was a junior teaching program which meant that she could teach in one-teacher school in the country.

 

She was 17 when she became a junior teacher at Jervois about 100 kilometres south-east of Adelaide. At this time, Linda was just two years old.

 

It was most unusual in 1949 for Italian parents to allow their daughter to leave home but they would have been comforted a little because Nives lived with a Veneto family who came from the same village as her father, San Vito d’Altivole.

 

 

Nives reflected on her time at Jervois: “This year also helped me to mature and mix with all types of people and children. I am sure that my love of teaching stemmed from that practical year of junior teaching.”

Marriage and teaching
At the beginning of 1950, Nives enrolled at Teachers College and completed the two-year course in December 1951. Nives and Duilio married in January 1952 and instead of having a honeymoon, they decided their money would be better spent on buying a lounge suite in their house in Torrensville!

They began married life as two energetic young people who worked hard in their respective jobs located quite near their house at Torrensville; Nives as a teacher and Duilio was working at the new airport at West Beach.

Nives’ first teaching job was at Lockleys Primary School and she thrived as a young teacher and involved herself in activities. For example, she became Sports Mistress and she sometimes brought migrant children home to help them with their English. Nives also taught English to adult migrants at night time twice a week.

Balancing family life with business
Nives balanced family life with assisting Duilio after he started his business in 1953. David was born in 1956, Anne in 1958 and Sandra in 1961. Alan lived for a short time after he was born in 1967.

Nives undertook the administrative work while Duilio did the physical work. At first, she did the books and learned on the job. As more houses were built by Danny Caon Pty Ltd, Nives chose interior fittings like tiles and white goods. The business was recognised with numerous awards for excellence in building.

Activities threaded through Nives’ life
Throughout her life, Nives has enjoyed opportunities to spend time with other people whether it was through sports – netball and basketball and bocce – or through social gatherings. She and Duilio have travelled widely and spent extended periods of time in Italy.

Nives has enjoyed the company of the ‘St Marys’ girls’ and the get togethers which sometimes included the Dominican sisters.

In 2023, Nives attended a gathering for past students and teachers at St Marys College from the 1940s to the 1980s. Nives was the oldest past student to share  memories of her school days.

Nives has enjoyed adventures such as jumping out of a plane for her 66^th birthday and climbing the Sydney Harbour bridge when she was 85. She was acknowledged for giving her last blood donation (104)  when she was 80 years old.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The lessons that Nives learned from her parents and the experience of living as a family in the boarding house provided a strong foundation for appreciating and respecting other people – and creating opportunities for widening her understanding and knowledge throughout her life.

 

Nives and Duilio love spending time with their children, their six grandchildren and the newest addition to the family, Olearia, their great-granddaughter who arrived in June 2024.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Madeleine Regan and Nives Caon nee Cescato
1 December 2024

All photos, apart from one provided by Maria Rosa Tormena, were supplied by Nives.

This is the first of two blogs that give glimpses into the lives of Duilio and Nives nee Cescato Caon over nine decades. Their experience contributes to the bigger context of Veneto migrant history in Adelaide. This blog focuses on Duilio’s life and the next one distils Nives’ experience.

The image above shows the Caon family
who were reunited in Adelaide in 1955.
Duilio stands beside his father, third from the right.

In 11 days time, it will be 76 years since Duilio Caon and his brother Galdino arrived in Adelaide. Duilio, who was 20 years old and Galdino, three years younger, went against their parents’ wishes and contacted their uncle Giacinto Caon and made arrangements to travel to Australia. Their uncle met them when they disembarked in Melbourne on 28^th November 1948.

A family attraction to Australia
Giacinto Caon initiated the family tradition of migration to Australia.

He had arrived in 1926 and went back to Italy in 1933 to marry Giuseppina Campagnaro. The couple returned to Adelaide in 1934 and lived in Franklin Street where they had a butcher shop. A second uncle, Angelo, migrated in 1937.

Duilio’s father did not want his sons to come to Australia because he had had a bad experience of life in Adelaide. He had migrated in February 1928, sponsored by his brother, Giacinto. Because of the Depression, employment was difficult to find and the only work he could find was clearing land 400 kms north west of Adelaide at Iron Knob. The conditions must have been difficult to endure and like many migrants at that difficult economic time, he returned to his own country. In 1930 he met his 2 year-old son, Duilio, for the first time.

Duilio – the eldest in the Caon family
Duilio was born at Ramon di Loria in May 1928, the first of 12 children born to Maddalena Luigia Sabbadin and Leandro Caon.  His father had left for Australia several months before Duilio’s birth – in the hope of finding opportunities to make money for the future of his wife and family.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Life in Ramon di Loria
Duilio remembers the poverty in Ramon as he was growing up. His parents leased land and lived in a large farmhouse with two other Caon families and there were 25 people to feed. There were few facilities in the house and family members walked half a kilometre to get water from a well.

 Duilio attended school for five years until he was 12 years old and then worked with his father and two uncles on the farm that had crops such as wheat and corn. The equivalent of about ten blocks of land in Australia, the property was rented at first, then the brothers were able to buy it.

The war years
In 1944 when he was 16 years old, Duilio was taken by German soldiers with other young boys to San Donà di Piave, a town on the River Piave about 70 kilometres from Ramon di Loria. They were removed from their families and loaded onto carriages used to transport animals and when they arrived, they found that their job was to dig trenches to protect the German Army from bombardments. In 1945, when the Americans made progress and the Germans retreated, Duilio ran away and joined the partisans. He remembers being able to take a gun, a horse and a bike from the German Army.

He eventually returned home to Ramon and found ways to earn money and one initiative was to sell the skins of rats which were sold for making gloves. The consequences of the war were felt deeply in areas like Loria where food was scarce and people were existing on very little.

 The dream grows
Duilio remembered those years as a “desperate” time. He kept his goal in mind, could see no future in Italy and the urge to migrate to Australia grew stronger.

 Dulio was fixed on his dream of living in Australia even when his parents encouraged him to think about going to Uruguay where they had relatives. He was independent and wrote to his uncle in Adelaide who lent his nephew the fares. (It took Duilio and Galdino a year to pay back the money .)

The voyage

When he left, Duilio remembered that his mother was very sad. His father took him and Galdino to Castelfranco Veneto to catch the train to the port of Genova. The voyage on the ‘Toscana’ took 42 days and Duilio recalled that this was one of the best times in his life – a young man suspended between the difficult life in Ramon and the dream of living in Australia. On the ship there was plentiful food and large numbers of young people who were also looking for a better future.

 

The dream is realised
The dream became a reality – and Duilio and Galdino settled in Adelaide assisted by their uncles, Giacinto and Angelo. Duilio had very positive first impressions and perhaps the biggest impact was that he could eat three meals a day. He stayed in Franklin Street in the west end of the City with his aunt and uncle. His aunt ran a boarding house where he lived for two years.

 Settling in Adelaide
Albert Del Fabbro, an Italian from Friuli had arrived in Australia in 1915 and by the time Duilio and Galdino arrived in 1948, he owned a successful mosaic and terrazzo business and over the years had employed many young Italian men. Duilio worked for Albert for about four years. See entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography – Biography – Umberto Primo (Albert) Del Fabbro – Australian Dictionary of Biography)

Duilio worked hard as his son, David explained at Dulio’s 70^th birthday –

When Dad first arrived, he worked very hard as a concrete and terrazzo worker, six days a week because he was determined to make good.

Sometimes it was necessary to work seven days.

 

Duilio attended night school in Grote Street in the City and learned English.

Extending the dream
The two brothers sent money back to their family in Italy who continued to experience the misery of poverty. Two more children were born after they left for Adelaide.  In late 1951, Duilio sponsored another 2  brothers, Terzo and Luigi, to migrate to Australia. Duilio realised that his dream of settling in Australia could extend to his whole family and he promised his parents that he could find a home and a job for everyone if they migrated. Duilio’s father sold his share of the land in Loria to pay for the passage for the rest of the family to migrate to Australia. In 1955, his parents and seven siblings, Prima, Sisto, Bruno, Liliana, Graziano, Pio and Margherita arrived in Adelaide.  His parents were in their early 50s when they arrived.

Duilio’s father worked at Holden’s Woodville and Duilio spent a day showing his father what to do on the production line. Two brothers became carpenters, two others worked in the building industry as a bricklayer and with concrete and Luigi worked with Duilio. The family lived in a house that Galdino, Terzo and Luigi had bought at Maylands and the block was large enough to subdivide which enabled Duilio  to build a new house for his parents later on.

Meeting Nives and building a business

In 1948 through his uncle Giacinto who was a friend to Clorinda and Angelo Cescato Duilio met their daughter, Nives, who was 16 years old. Nives and Duilio became friends and three years later they married in January 1952.

In 1953, Duilio decided to try and work for himself and with Nives, took the first steps placing advertisements in newspapers. Duilio began taking on jobs in the cement paving and terrazzo industry. The dream of owning a business began with Duilio and Nives making cement bricks on the vacant block next door. The bricks were for the first house that Duilio built in Adelaide. Over the years, the business, Danny Caon Pty Ltd became well known – Duilio managing all the physical work and Nives was responsible for the office and administrative work and later, for  the internal features of the houses.

Their son David summarised their partnership:

… In 1968 Dad moved from building only a couple of houses a year to full-time building. He had found his calling and his future. He loved his work and worked tirelessly. He worked out in the building field on the job while Mum did the books and chose internal fittings … they worked well as a team … They did well and built houses all over the metropolitan area.

Danny Caon Pty Ltd won awards including Home of the Year Award in 1982 and was recognised for its quality work.

 The potential of a dream
A young man’s dream of having a better future, his sense of independence and confidence in his own resources all combined for Duilio to embark on a journey to leave his family in Ramon after the second World War and begin life in Australia. His dream created the possibility for his parents and brothers and sisters to migrate and enjoy the opportunities of employment, schooling and the more comfortable life possible in Adelaide after the war.

 

Duilio and Nives raised their family and built a successful business partnership, enjoyed travel and made many trips to Italy. They take opportunities now to reflect on their long and productive lives. Their three children, six grandchildren and now, their first great grandchild, Olearia, who was born in June 2024,  bring them great joy.

 

 

 

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Madeleine Regan, Duilio and Nives Caon
17 November 2024

All photos supplied by Duilio and Nives.