Happy New Year! This is the first monthly blog for 2026. There will be news in following blogs about a different way that stories will be transmitted.
In this blog you will read about the Brion family from Jervois who were well known to the first generation of the Veneto market gardeners. The links between some of the families have continued into the next generation.
Lui Brion has lived in the same house at Jervois (96 kilometres south-east of Adelaide and adjacent to the River Murray) all his life.
(Lui is pictured in the photo above outside the Brion family house in 1945 with his parents, Narciso and Maria, sister, Alice, and little brother, Dennis.)
The local stone and brick house was built in 1932 by Lui’s father, Narciso Brion, and another man from the Veneto region, Antonio Cheso, a stonemason who also lived at Jervois. Narciso had an important motivation for building the house because he was waiting to be reunited with Maria Gatto, his sweetheart whom he had known in San Vito in the province of Treviso, in the Veneto region. The couple were married by proxy in 1932, and Maria arrived in Australia in 1933.
1927 – Narciso Brion arrives in Australia
Poverty was one of the main reasons that brought Narciso to Adelaide in 1927. Narciso was born on 15 September 1904 in San Vito di Altivole in the province of Treviso, in the Veneto region. Like other young Italian men who came from contadino or peasant farmer families in the Veneto region at that time, Narciso had realised that it would be difficult to plan for a future with Maria because of the hardships caused by extensive poverty.
At the age of 23 years, Narciso was a blacksmith and had heard about opportunities in Australia from others who had migrated there. He made the decision to migrate to Australia.
Narciso arrived in Adelaide in July 1927 sponsored by Roberto Guglielmin, also from Altivole who had arrived in Adelaide the year before. It was with Roberto that Narciso took an important step to settle in South Australia. In September 1928, just a little over a year after Narciso had arrived, the two men signed Crown Leases for 79 acres of land at Jervois. The land had been made available by the Government in 1925, and the Jervois Irrigation area was seen as being suitable for dairy farms.
Narciso and Roberto formed a partnership and their intention was to become dairy farmers. It was a commitment of two young men aged in their 20s to make a life in Australia. They bought cows from a dairy farmer who was leaving the area. They built sheds with old pieces of iron and posts cut from trees. Lui remembered his father telling him that he slept in a kind of tent made with hessian bags tied to posts. They began work on their farm at a time when other Italian migrants, including the group of Veneto market gardeners, were struggling to find jobs and eke out a living because of the circumstances of the Depression years. Racism against Italians added to the early challenges of starting out as dairy farmers.
In 1932, Narciso bought out Roberto’s share in the partnership, and it was a challenge for him to build up the farm by himself. He bought cattle from farmers in the Adelaide hills and milked them twice a day and took the milk to the river Murray about a kilometre away where a boat picked it up and delivered it to Murray Bridge. It was lonely for a few years working from dawn to night-time to make a living and preparing for the arrival of Maria.
Marriage and farming life at Jervois
When Maria joined Narciso at Jervois, they worked together on the farm milking about 38 cows by hand morning and night, and there were other duties they shared that were constant and time-consuming. Narciso had dug by hand, two channels from the river to allow flood irrigation of the swamp where he planted rye grass and clover for feed for the cows. The channels were about 1.3 kms long and about 1.5 metres deep.
The first of Maria and Lui’s three children, Alice, was born in 1934, followed by Lui in 1937 and then Dennis in 1945. They had their own poultry and in autumn each year, they killed a pig and made salami. Lui and Maria worked hard and in 1939, were able to buy a Ford truck which made transporting cans of milk easier.
The couple were able to pay off the farm debt and created their family life and sponsored relatives and friends to migrate to Australia.
Maria and Narciso were well known for providing warm hospitality to people including some of the Veneto community who travelled from Adelaide to buy local cheese and visited the house at Jervois.
Photo supplied by Bruno Piovesan.
A son of one of the Veneto market gardeners, Dino Piovesan, was interviewed for the Italian market gardeners’ oral history project and recalled a trip to Jervois to see the Brion family when he was a child in the late 1940s.
I do remember one, and this took place when Dad was still alive … There was about another dozen of us on the back of the truck, and we did spend the day at Tailem Bend; got away early in the morning, very early in the morning, and we went to Mr Brion’s home, Narciso Brion’s home, at Jervois, which is just this side of Tailem Bend… He was a dairy farmer, and along there, [were] several other Veneti from the Veneto Region, I can’t remember their names, but anyway they were dairy farmers as well. They would sell their milk to the Jervois Cooperative Milk Factory, which was in Jervois, and they would make cheese mainly, and supply milk to AMSCOL, I believe.
(Dino Piovesan, OH 872/17, 23 September 2011, pp 15-16)
Social life at Jervois
Lui remembers there were about seven other Veneto families (Fabbian, Cazzolato, Cheso, Gazzola, Bellon, Guglielmin, Crivellaro, Antonello) who worked farms in the Jervois/Tailem Bend area. It was a small community, and in the early days, the adults shared a social life that consisted of visiting other families, (in fio’) playing cards, singing together and the men played bocce.
On New Years Day, as the number of children increased, the Veneto families had a tradition of going to the lakes about 11 kilometres from Wellington to enjoy a picnic. The families participated in a summer competition to see who could grow the largest watermelon.
Growing up at Jervois
As a child, Lui understood the importance and necessity of working life in the family: the twice-daily milking of cows and tending crops for feed. Even as a ten-year old, Lui remembered that he grubbed weeds and did odd jobs for his father. Lui says, “There were always jobs and feeding the calves was one of my tasks from the time I was young.”
In an article for “Tailem Topics,” Lui said, “I left school at 13 and worked on the farm – the channels were a lot of hard work, scything the grass and all digging was done by shovels.”
Lui recalls that the family kept Veneto traditions and each year, killed a pig to make salami and bought grapes from Langhorne Creek to make wine. Narciso had built a cellar under the house where he stored the smallgoods, cheese and wine.
At 15 years, Lui started playing football for the Jervois Football Club including in premierships and continued for about 20 years. Lui has maintained his commitment to the Club over the years and has been a barbeque chef for more than 25 years.
In February 1954, when he was 17 years old, Lui took some time off from working on the farm and went on a trip to Spencer Gulf on the motor vessel, ‘Moonta’.
He shared the trip with boys from two local Veneto families, Oscar Guglielmin, Egidio Cazzolato and Giuseppe Antonello (Lui went on the ‘Gulf Trip’ which was a popular six-day holiday that was reasonable in cost and took in Port Lincoln and other ports on Spencer Gulf.)
Lui was 19 years old when the Murray flooded along the course of the river after heavy rains in the north-eastern states. In September 1956, to save them, the milking cows were transported to a farm at Kongorong near Mount Gambier where Lui lived alone in an old house. He helped the farmer host, and milked the 58 cows by himself twice a day for a year.
After the floods, his father restored the channels, erected fencing that was destroyed in the floods, and sowed pasture that would feed the cows when they returned. Lui remembered that year – “I learned a lot about being independent, having to take care of the cows and myself.”
Lessons from Lui’s parents
Lui reflected that he learned from his parents to be careful and to look after and support his family. He said that they modelled the habit of working hard and the importance of maintaining and enjoying good relationships in the community. Narciso and Maria wanted their three children to make something of themselves and to have happy lives. They passed on the importance of Veneto traditions and respect for the first generation who started new lives in Australia.
Narciso and Maria kept in contact with their relatives in San Vito di Altivole and visited their families in Italy once.
Narciso died in 1981 and Maria, in 1996. They are buried in the Murray Bridge cemetery.
The girl next door…
The Fabbian family lived next door to the Brions at Jervois. The two families had a strong connection that was made even deeper when Lui married Maria, daughter of Angelo and Amalia Fabbian, on Valentines Day, 1959. Lui and Maria formed a great 66-year partnership working together on the farm and raising their three children, Deborah, Steven and Christine. They had the dairy for 32 years until 1991 and then turned to raising beef. Maria’s story will be another blog in the future.
In retirement…
Lui grows tomatoes and radichi and continues to make salami with son, Steven, who lives at Wellington, at a family day each year. He participates in activities related to the Jervois Football Club including cooking the barbeque at matches for the last 25 years.
Lui and Maria are in frequent contact with Deborah and Christine and their families who live in Canada.
While it was a challenge to give up the cattle in 2023, Lui says that he and Maria have accepted the changes. They love living in the house that Lui’s father built, and they enjoy a very happy and full life gardening and spending time with relatives and friends.
Lui Brion, Maria Brion nee Fabbian, Madeleine Regan
11 January 2026
All family photos provided by Maria and Lui.
Sources
- Adelaide AZ: https://adelaideaz.com/articles/gulf-trip-around-south-australia-s-spence-gulf-a-popular-holiday-from-1906-to-1955
- Interview with Lui and Maria (nee Fabbian) Brion
- Italian market gardeners’ oral history project OH 872/17, Dino Piovesan interviewed by Madeleine Regan on 23 September 2011, pp 15-16
- National Archives of Australia
- “Recorder”, (Port Pirie), Monday 8 February 1954, page 2
- Tailem Bend Progress Association, “Tailem Topics” #86, May 2019.
