Last Saturday 19th July 2025, the book, “‘I buy this piece of ground here’: An Italian market-gardener community in Adelaide, 1920s – 1970s” was launched. About 160 people attended and after the formalities, enjoyed making contact with friends and relatives in the Veneto community. One woman told me that she met a member of another market gardener family for the first time in 40 years! Others said it was great to see so many people who were connected with the market gardeners who had migrated to Australia in the late 1920s.
It was lovely to see grandchildren of the first generation who were there to hear about a book that featured those men and women who established their market gardens in the Lockleys area in the 1930s. There was a sense of happiness in knowing that their history had been published.
The book title
The clue to the title of the book can be found on page 208. It relates to the importance of being able to own land in Australia especially for men and women who came from families who were contadini or peasant farmers in the Veneto region.
Two voices
Frankie Ballestrin and Diana Panazzolo nee Santin spoke about being interviewed and their families. Frankie (interviewed in 2008) told the audience about his father, Isidoro, arriving in 1927 as young man of 22 years and described a distressing experience four months after he arrived in Adelaide. (see pages 43 – 46 in the book).
Diana (interviewed in 2013) expressed her pride in the lives of her grandparents, Giovanni and Costantina Santin, and her satisfaction in seeing their photo on the front of the book. She also recalled that her nonna wore aprons every day and she had one to show at the launch.
The event
Aida Innocente, who was MC for the launch, added to the information about the book:
The book bears witness to all our lives; formalising our history in the context of the nation’s history, ensuring that the contribution of our migrant community to the local area, to the building of the state, to the whole idea of nation-building is documented and examined, recognised and honoured.
“I buy this piece of ground” examines many significant milestones in the lives of our Veneto community in Lockleys. The recognition of land as an economic and emotional anchor; the resilience of migrants as they built new lives, transformed lives, worked hard to create a good life for their families, to ‘sistemarsi’, to belong.
…But I think at its heart, the book celebrates the kinship among families, the proxy family relationships that were created and nurtured and respected, and live to this day.
Associate Professor Christine Winter, who had been the supervisor of my PhD at Flinders University, was one of two people who launched the book and she spoke about it:
The structure of the book is along a timeline from the first arrivals, the children, and grandchildren, the acquisition of the land, and the sale of it, and the continuing intergenerational community that was forged on the market garden lands.
This structure is interwoven with important themes: what did it feel like to arrive in a place unknown? How did a supportive network of families evolve? How did the families work out labour tasks, when the inter-generational mix that did this in Veneto did not exist in Australia?
We read, for example, that women stepped into roles never envisaged in Italy, and their children, especially daughters, shouldered extra duties in the home.
The book looks at wider histories of migration and sets out what is so unique and special about the [Veneto] market garden community.
Dr Kiera Lindsey, History Advocate for South Australia also gave a speech to launch the book:
“I buy this piece of ground here”, is a book that is alive with voices, your voices and the voices of your ancestors.
… This book started with a box. A pine box. Or to be more precise, a humble half-case. Stamped with ‘Tomatoes Grown by G & E Marchioro’, this half-case was manufactured by the father of Madeleine’s friend Aida, Angelo Innocente, who migrated to Australia from a small village in Treviso in 1950.
But as well as tomatoes, this humble-half case also carried something else that grew out of the soil of Adelaide’s West and that is your stories.… Although the term ‘market gardening’ might immediately conjure miles and miles of glasshouse; piles and piles of celery, and truck heaped high with cauli and tomatoes, this book has taught me to think of the individuals who had the courage and conviction to take root in this paese beneath the harsh South Australian sun.
…At the beating heart of this book is a story about how your community transformed a strange place into home; how you created a sense of place and how you learnt to belong – to one another -helping each other out with everyday issues and economic challenges again and again.
The oral histories
In the book there are extracts from most of the oral history interviews that were recorded for the project between 2008 and 2023. In that time, 65 interviews were recorded in Adelaide as well as 12 in the Veneto region in Italy. Eleonora Marchioro interviewed five people including one in Italian. Anna Mechis nee Rebellato also recorded an interview in Italian. The majority of interviewees were from market gardener families.
Sadly, since 2008, 23 people who were interviewed have died, including Ermenegilda Simeoni. It was important to have recorded all the memories of the descendants of the first generation for posterity.
The oral histories are available to listen to in the family pages on this website – and there are also transcripts for most of them.
The recordings are also accessible online as a digital collection (Italian market gardeners)in the State Library of South Australia. Use this link to find an interview:
The stories
The nine chapters in the book cover the history of the Veneto market gardener community from the time that the first group of men arrived from seven different villages in the Veneto region, most from the province of Treviso and two families from Vicenza. I made decisions to outline the main events – like the Depression, the problems faced by Italians in Australia when Mussolini was in power in Italy; the effects of the Second World War, leasing and buying land; building families and social lives and the importance of the community being a replacement for the families they had left behind in Italy.
As I researched, I became aware of the way that the first generation formed a paese or a village in the area of Lockleys. All the families lived within 3 kilometres of each other and the closeness in distance enabled the strength of that community.
The close connections came through in the oral history interviews – the godparent relationships, children from the market gardener families who were friends at St Joseph’s Primary School at Flinders Park and the social occasions in the packing sheds.
In Chapters 7 and 8, I focused on the changes that occurred as the first generation aged, the different choices that most of the second generation made to work in jobs away from the market gardens and the urban development that began in Kidman Park and Flinders Park.
The last chapter outlines the theme of continuity of the paese in the second generation and the close ties that continue to exist between families here in Adelaide and in the Veneto region.
Support for the launch
The launch was a great success. I am grateful to the priests in the Mater Christi parish who enabled us to use the hall for the launch. I am thankful for the support of the Veneto Club Inc., Adelaide for making a financial contribution to the launch. I also appreciated the generosity of so many people who brought plates of afternoon tea to share – and those people who helped out with coffee pots and those who hosted the event and assisted with the organisation of the hall – and the photographers.
The website
This website has been in existence for 11 years. At that time, the City of Charles Sturt gave a grant for its design. I am very grateful to Michael Campbell who has managed it voluntarily since 2014. There are a lot of behind-the-scenes tasks that he undertakes including researching and organising the security features, selecting domain and other software items, updating and maintaining items that mean that the website is protected from threats.
I am grateful also to the Veneto Club Inc., Adelaide that has funded costs of maintaining the blog since 2021. You might notice that there is a link to the Veneto Club on the website which is reciprocated on the Veneto Club website. The annual contribution has enabled people to continue reading and enjoying the blogs about individual Veneto people, families, Veneto traditions and events.
Graziella Ledda assisted with Italian translations of the blogs for a few years and this was great. We discontinued in about 2021 when we found that they can be automatically translated.
Since 2021, there have been more blogs about people in the wider Veneto community beyond the market gardeners. Adding the wider stories expands our understanding of Veneto identity in Adelaide formed over several generations.
As Aida Innocente said in her introduction to the launch:
Land and ground, communities and traditions – these are the things that link all of us – they are not what makes us different.
Madeleine Regan
27 July 2025
Complimenti per il tuo capolavoro.
A wonderful event and celebration of the history of these families and the story of migration