Author: Madeleine Regan

This time, something a little different …
Guest writer, Francesco (Fran) Bonato  and I were in contact before I spent time researching in the Veneto region in 2018.  He writes about his family who are Veneto migrants – but not market gardeners.

Fran has been an architect for 40 years and founded the practice, Tectvs.*

From furniture to architecture

Attilio Clementino Bonato landed in Perth, Australia, in the summer of 1956. The son of a subsistence farmer, he was one of 10 siblings. And like many Italian migrants, he followed an older and a younger brother to Australia. Another brother and sister later; she eventually returned to Italy.

Tino, as he was known to his friends in Australia, was born on 3 September 1931, in Fossalta di Trebaseleghe about 25 kms north-west of Venice in the province of Padua in the Veneto. His ancestral origins were Sud-Tyrol, his father born in Borso del Grappa just above Bassano del Grappa at the foot of Monte Grappa. They moved down onto the plains following WWI when the Italians, more particularly the Alpini (his father was an Alpino), fought the Austrians.

Famously portrayed in Hemingway’s 1929 novel, A Farewell to Arms, halting the Austrian advance at Ponte Vecchio bridging the Brenta at Bassano del Grappa. The bridge is famous for a range of reasons, not least of which having been designed by Palladio in 1569 and another as one of the Veneto’s oldest surviving bars; Bar Nardini circa 1779.

But Tino’s story is not so common. Although like many from the Veneto, well in fact all of Italy, he came to Australia seeking that better life. He did not arrive here and work as a labourer or farmer (as his two brothers were then doing just out of Perth); he came to Australia as a furniture maker. And this too was no coincidence having met Bill Clark in Venice circa 1954, while Bill was on his ‘grand tour’. During his time in Venice they met in the workshop where Tino was working at that time. You see, Bill Clark was also a furniture maker.

Two years later, Tino arrived at the doorstep of Bill’s family home in Lockleys unannounced. A Saturday night, his wife answered the door and he handed her the business card Bill had given him in Venice two years earlier; he didn’t speak English nor she Italian. Bill recalled him immediately; in those days you remembered to whom you gave your business cards. They put him up in their lean-to and started work Monday morning. They found him a rental and two years later my mother, Ornella Marcon, arrived from the same home town, Fossalta. I was born a year later.

And so begins the story of my father’s influence, on me and my younger brother; we are both architects and practice together, along with a long-time school friend.

The relationship I had with my father in those early years had a lot to do with helping him make furniture; as soon as I was tall enough to see into the back of a drum sander he had me on the other side catching panels as they came out. Unlike many kids my age, who would be off to school and club sport of a Saturday morning, I could be found with my father at Bill’s factory, Carlton Manufacturing in Salisbury, performing some necessary task.

Eventually, this relationship went from student to collaborator and to making furniture together. I completed my architectural degree at the University of Adelaide in 1982 and founded Tectvs in 1989.  And this subsequently led to the ritorni or return visits.

Although my father passed away in 2007, I continue these ritorni to Italy, particularly the Veneto. They are more professional than personal, albeit having enabled all of the wider family to stay connected and make new and dear friends. They now too travel to Australia.

Francesco Bonato
2 June 2020

*Tectvs has worked across a range of  local, national and international projects.

 

A causa della situazione di Covid-19, non e’ stato possibile tradurre il blog in Italiano.

The following information about the Piovesan family has been compiled from interviews and family archives.

Angelo Piovesan was one of four sons in a family who emigrated from Ponzano Veneto in the Veneto region. Three sons migrated to Australia: Angelo arrived in Adelaide in 1927, Attilio in 1937and Mario in 1950. The fourth brother, Leono, went to Venezuela in 1949. Two other siblings, Giuseppe and Amelia remained in Ponzano Veneto.

Angelo was one of the Veneto pioneer market gardeners on Frogmore Road at Kidman Park. He also spent time working at the Spotted Tiger mica mine in the Northern Territory with other Veneto men.

Bruno Piovesan provided details about his father and mother in the interview he recorded for the project in 2008:

My parents were born in a place called Ponzano Veneto, that’s about twenty‑five kilometres from Venice, very close to Treviso, and my father came to Australia at the age of 22 – he was born in 1905, 4th December 1905. He came to Australia in 1927.  After seven years of working in Australia, my mother, [Rosalia Zanatta] which he knew as a fiancée in Italy, could not afford her fare to Australia, so she virtually had to find her own money to come to Australia. She came to Australia in 1934 …

Angelo and Rosalia both came from very poor peasant farming families. Their second son, Dino, interviewed in 2011 explains the poverty:

The family ground, whatever hectares it may have been, was simply for family sustenance from one year … I remember them saying that if they were lucky and they had one or two or three cows in the stable, a cow would have had a calf, and that would have been sold, and that would have been a little bit of extra money for the family. But other than that, it was for the family sustenance from one year to the other, with wheat and maize, and of course the grapes and the wine.

Angelo and Rosalia had three sons, Nillo, Dino and Bruno. Bruno recalls the Piovesan market garden from his childhood and describes how his father worked:

… they used to make a good living out of 12 glasshouses, he used to make a good living just with twelve glasshouses. Had about five acres of land in those years and he used to plant potatoes and other type of beans and things like that – I remember sowing beans and all this business. And you had to dig potatoes virtually with a fork to start with, then they had a plough – all horse-drawn, there was no machinery, just all horse-drawn – and I very vividly remember digging glasshouses by hand fork, you had to dig the glasshouses with a hand fork, till the age of about 16 or 18. 

Angelo Piovesan died suddenly in 1949, aged 43 years and Rosalia maintained the market gardens with assistance from Attilio, Angelo’s younger brother. The three sons who were then aged 14, 13 and 12 years also worked in the gardens. Parts of the family land were sold in the 1960s and Nillo and Dino developed a market garden at Bolivar for some years. Rosalia died in 1985. Nillo died in 2011, and Bruno, in 2014.

Madeleine Regan
17 May 2020

A causa della situazione di Covid-19, non e’ stato possibile tradurre il blog in italiano.

This is a guest post from Aida Innocente whose parents were well-known to the Veneto market gardeners in Adelaide.

My father Angelo Innocente arrived in Australia in June 1950. He was born in Caselle (PV Treviso) in 1921. His maternal uncle, Pietro Compostella, sponsored him.

Dad left behind my mother Elsa and their three year-old daughter, Mirella, with his family. Mum and Mirella arrived in November 1952. I was born in 1955. Dad lived in White Avenue, Lockleys from the beginning, and he and Mum only left five months before his death in February 2012.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dad initially worked at Peter Shearer’s on Port Road and then at Kelvinator’s. At night he worked for Harold Dare who owned a factory on White Avenue that made half-cases. Harold’s mother was Chinese and his father, Australian. His nephews lived next-door to my family in the early days.

After leaving Kelvinator’s, Dad worked for Harold full-time. When Dad decided to go into business with Emilio Loro, a Veneto from Loria, Harold lent him money to set up business – in competition with him!  My father always remained in contact with Harold even after he moved into a nursing home.

Dad and Emilio established AE (Angelo & Emilio) Case Company in the late ‘50s on Grange Road, Flinders Park on a property owned by the Berno family. The factory was an old shed. They made half-cases for packing tomatoes and crates for celery and made up to 1,000 half-cases a day. I loved going to the Grange Road property and I played in an abandoned house. In front of the house sprawled a glorious peppercorn tree. The smell of peppercorns always takes me back to this time.

The boxes were mainly made of pine. The pine logs came from the South East and Mount Compass. Dad often collected the logs from Mount Compass. He and Mum would often do this after tea. One night, Mirella and I sat on the front porch waiting for their return. The freeway hadn’t been built and the roads in the Adelaide hills were narrow and winding. They returned after midnight. Dad had run out of petrol!

Sometimes after school I went with Dad to Bolivar, Virginia, St Kilda to deliver boxes. One afternoon we stopped to inspect the pig Dad had bought from a client at Waterloo Corner for the yearly salami making. Checking on the pig’s growth was part of the ritual. Dad immediately recognised his chosen pig in a pen full of pigs! He was very particular about how the pig (never a sow) was reared and fed.

In the early ‘70s Dad and Milio built a factory on Azalea Drive Lockleys, on the Torrens. When Milio decided to leave, Mum became Dad’s new partner. They worked together till they retired in 1981. Carton boxes had arrived and Dad did not want to start again.

Mum and Dad’s good friend, Sila Bottin, worked with them for several years. The three often made deliveries after work. For dinner they would have a steak and onion sandwich from the food truck at the Cavan Hotel on Port Wakefield Road. The Cavan was referred to as the “Abattoz” (the Abattoirs was across the road). A beer always washed down the sandwich.

Over January and February in 1976, when I was 20, my parents visited family in Argentina, Brazil and Italy. Tomato season was over but the Mercuri on Findon Road had a celery crop to market. Sila and I made the celery crates and I got a learner’s licence to drive the truck to deliver them. My Santolo, Vittorio Marchioro sat next to me as the licensed driver!

My Dad had clients from all over Italy and other parts of Europe. As a child I remember these clients – Calabrians, Neapolitans, Bulgarians, Slavs, Greeks – dropping in to our home before Christmas to settle their accounts. Dad always made sure he had plenty of beer on hand. His clients brought fresh produce as gifts. I now look upon these Christmas visits as a great symbol of the meaning of Christmas – peace and harmony to all men of all lands and faiths.

Aida Innocente
3 May 2020

A causa della situazione di Covid-19, non è stato possibile tradurre il blog in italiano