In the second of the blogs about photos in the lives of the Veneto market gardener families, I’ve adapted an earlier one to share some images taken in Adelaide after the first generation of Veneto market gardeners arrived from the Veneto region in the 1920s and 1930s. Families have kindly given permission to use the photos that have become part of the archive of images that tell the story of the market gardeners in Flinders Park and Kidman Park on this website.
A studio family portrait – c 1927/1928
The oldest photo taken in Adelaide that I’ve seen is the portrait of the Marchioro family which was taken in late 1927/early 1928. (This is the feature photo above) Margherita and Francesco had arrived in 1926 with Mary who was a baby at the time. Lina, who is perched on the arm of the chair between her parents, was born in a boarding house in Hindley Street in the west end of the City of Adelaide in March 1927.
The family portrait is formal – the parents are dressed handsomely and their daughters are clothed in fresh white dresses – adults and children look directly at the camera with serious expressions. The backdrop suggests an idealised scenario and perhaps this is the positive image that Francesco and Margherita wanted to communicate as the photo was probably taken to send back to their families in Malo and Monte di Malo. However, the reality for the family was very different. In Lina’s interview she remembered that her parents had moved several times in the first years in the search for cheaper accommodation because it was difficult to earn an adequate income in the Depression years. The third daughter, Connie, was born in 1938.
A different family portrait – c 1931
In the second photo, Lina nee Bordin and Gelindo Rossetto are pictured with their eldest son Romeo who died when he was seven years old. The photo was taken around 1931 at Lockleys on the southern side of the River Torrens where Gelindo and Lina had a market garden. Lina had arrived from Italy the year before and started a very different life in primitive conditions on Gelindo’s market garden on the south side of the River Torrens at Lockleys.
Lina looks stern and focuses straight at the camera as Gelindo feeds Romeo. We, the viewers, get the context of the land, the old gums, the bamboo on the right, growing along the river. It communicates an image of a pioneer family. It’s a portrait but not the formal kind taken in a studio. It is as if Gelindo has stopped work and joined Lina and Romeo for the photograph. Perhaps the photo was processed to send to the families in the province of Treviso to show life on the land in Adelaide.
The power of the Box Brownie camera
In her interviews recorded in 2010 and 2011, Lina Rismondo nee Marchioro recalled that her father gave her a Brownie Box camera for her 12th birthday in 1939. “I think my Dad spoilt me, really. He used to love buying me things.” (Oral History interview OH 872/9, 9 June 2010, p 33) The Box Brownie or Brownie Junior Camera was the camera used by young people in Australia from the 1930s.[1] It had been marketed as a simple camera that could be handled by children and adolescents.
Fortunately for us, Lina used her camera to capture the lives of the Veneto market gardener families in the area they called ‘Lockleys’ in the 1940s.
Lina was a young girl when her parents, Francesco and Margherita Marchioro, moved to Frogmore Road where Margherita worked a market garden with her brother-in-law, Vittorio. Before the Second World War Lina and her family had transferred their home and farm to Pierson Street Lockleys.
Lina took photos of her extended family and the Veneto community. One photo shows her mother and aunt, Angelina Marchioro, picking onions on Frogmore Road, a reminder that women also worked the land. Lina’s collection of photos gives an insight into the everyday lives of the market gardener families, relationships in families and events like childrens’ birthday parties and gatherings of groups in the community.
Links between families – 1940s
Lina took this photo of Maria and Egidio Ballestrin with Angelina and Johnny Marchioro on Frogmore Road sometime in 1941.
Maria and Angelina are standing in front of a chook run and behind them in the background is the Marchioro market garden and the corrugated iron house is just visible in the top right.
The two women holding their first-born children look content and proud standing in the context of a fairly harsh environment.
Jimmy and his mother had arrived in Fremantle in June 1940 expecting to join Narcisio, Maria’s husband and Jimmy’s father who had been in Adelaide with his brothers since 1938. Jimmy explains in his interview that when they arrived in Perth, the passengers on the ship, the Remo, were considered ‘prisoners-of-war’ because Italy had entered the war against the Allies. The passengers could not continue their journey for about three weeks until the Australian Government approved the ship’s movements. The Ballestrins and the Marchioros became dear friends, and Jimmy and Johnny maintained a life-long friendship until Johnny’s death in 2023.
Working life, 1950s – and a photo returns to Adelaide
This image features Carmela Rossetto nee Buffon in her shop in the west end of Hindley Street. It was taken in the 1950s and she had sent it to relatives in Bigolino perhaps to show them that she was an accomplished business woman and her life in Adelaide as a widow and mother was prosperous.
Carmela and her older child, Anna, had arrived in Adelaide in 1929, joining her husband, Domenico Rossetto who had migrated in 1926. They ran the grocery shop in Hindley Street from sometime in the 1930s. In 1946 when Domenico died, Carmela applied successfully to purchase the property that included the shop and residence.
In the photo, Carmela looks the very image of the proprietor, shelves fully stocked with goods and she is ready to serve at the cash register. We can imagine that her family in Bigolino would have been pleased that she was a successful business woman.
In an interesting twist, the photo found its way back to Adelaide in the last few years. When Vicki Mattiazzo, the daughter of Oscar Mattiazzo, (the nephew of Carmela Rossetto) visited Italy, relatives in Bigolino gave it back to the family. The photo has been added to the Mattiazzo/Buffon archives.
There are many other photos in the archive on the Veneto market gardeners’ website that illustrate the new lives that the first generation established in Adelaide. The few that are represented in this blog convey the experience of family life as migrants that contrasted with the way that their relatives lived in large households in small villages in the Veneto region.
Madeleine Regan – and thanks to Christine Rebellato nee Mattiazzo
20 October 2024
[1] State Library of South Australia Digital Collections, Brownie Junior Camera – https://digital.collections.slsa.sa.gov.au/nodes/view/7708