Veneto market gardeners 1927

When Adelina (Lina) Marchioro was born on 12^th March 1927, her parents had been living in Adelaide for about a year. They had emigrated with their six-month old daughter, Mary, from Malo in Vicenza in the Veneto region.

 

The family lived in a boarding house in Hindley Street owned by Lina’s uncle. Lina was born in the year when the majority of the first-generation Veneto market gardeners arrived in Adelaide.

 

 

 

Lina died on 15^th January 2022 after a long and rich life.
I interviewed Lina four times in 2010 and 2011 and she provided many details about her memories of growing up at Lockleys, the family market gardens and other aspects of her life. The following tribute reflects the themes we covered in the  interviews. – and conversations with Lina’s sister, Connie.

We called it ‘Lockleys’
It was from Lina that I learned about the name that the Veneto market gardeners gave to the area that they lived and worked in from the 1930s to the 1970s:

Lockleys … That’s where most of the Italians went anyhow from that Veneto region, they went to Lockleys … Frogmore Road, we called it Lockleys, Frogmore Road.

In the early days, Lina’s father worked for Del Fabbro terrazzo and cement business and her mother and uncle Vittorio worked the market garden on Frogmore Road and grew potatoes, onions, beetroot and trombone. Lina pointed out that it was too expensive for the Veneto market gardeners to buy glasshouses in the beginning. So, they made a living from growing outside vegetables and saved for glasshouses and then grew tomatoes and beans.

 

Early memories of Frogmore Road
Lina remembered when the first generation of Veneto men were living near each other on the market gardens and before they brought wives and children from Italy or before they got married. They gathered on the land that Secondo Tonellato and Angelo Piovesan worked – it would have been in the early 1930s:

At least twice a week the men would go there of a night-time and Mum would be roasting some chestnuts and the men would be singing … Oh the singing was beautiful. I can still hear them singing … all standing out with their arms around each other’s shoulders singing away.

The gift of a camera
When Lina was 12 years old Lina’s father gave her a Brownie Box camera and she began taking photos of people in the market gardens area of ‘Lockleys.’ Lina took her first photos during the war years.

Today we are fortunate because we have dozens of her beautiful photos that she carefully took and showed aspects of life on Frogmore Road – glasshouses, harvesting of onions, relatives and friends, groups of women and children, images of children at play and the flat land without trees, few houses – unrecognisable from today’s suburban environment.

The war years
In about 1939, the family moved to a block of land in Pierson Street, Lockleys. During the war, Lina recalled that she assisted her father to read newspapers in English so he could find out what was happening in Italy and in the area where the Marchioro families were living. When American soldiers were camped near their house in Pierson Street, Lina’s father invited them into their house and gave them his home-made wine and her mother made spaghetti for them.

Lina’s uncle, Florindo, was interned for nearly four years and spent about half of that time in Loveday internment camp – in the Riverland about 220 kilometres NE of Adelaide. In her interview, Lina recalled going to Loveday with her uncle’s wife.  They were billeted on a vineyard for a week where they picked grapes and they visited him every evening and Lina recalled her impressions:

The camp, they were like huts, iron and timber huts, and there were … Italians and then Germans and the Japanese. They were all in different sections of the camp … we had to go to the office and then we’d be taken over to the mess … and all these men were there having their meals and we were sitting with my uncle …

 

The legacy of Lina’s parents
Lina’s parents were hard working and wanted to make their lives in Australia.

Francesco and Margherita were naturalised in 1931. They faced the challenge of Francesco’s ill health which prevented him from working in the glasshouses although he worked in the terrazzo industry. He died in 1945 at the age of 43. At the time Mary was 20 years old, Lina, 18 and Connie was 7 years.

Margherita lived a long life. She had arrived in Adelaide as a 21-year-old and never returned to Italy. She worked as a business owner for many years in her market garden, built her house, cared for her daughter Mary, and loved her family. She died in 2001 aged 97 years. Mary died aged 59 in 1986.

 

Lina and Connie always kept in touch with their cousins, Johnny and Romano Marchioro. Romano died on 20 March 2020.

 

 

Marriage and the generations
When she was 25 Lina married Ruggero Rismondo who had arrived in 1950 from Rovigno in what is known today as Istria. Lina and Ruggero had three sons, Francis, Ricky and Michael – their wives, children and grandchildren.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Working life
Lina worked with her mother in the glasshouses for some time until she followed her interest in dressmaking and trained in a large garment factory in Shell House on North Terrace in the City of Adelaide. Lina worked with about 100 women and after a period she joined another young woman and they opened a shop at Prospect where they designed and made dresses for women who were well-to-do.

After her marriage, Lina continued her seamstress work from home and was employed as a machinist for a dress shop in Adelaide Arcade. She also worked in the kitchens at Minda and the Adelaide Airport and in the Airport restaurant with her sister Connie.

Travel
Lina and Ruggero visited Italy five times and Lina formed strong bonds with her relatives at Malo. They also stayed with Ruggero’s family. They travelled to other places including Japan and Sri Lanka.

Friendships

Throughout her life, Lina built strong friendships  and one of her oldest  living friends, Teresa, was her neighbour on Pierson Street. In the photo opposite, Lina stands in front of glasshouses with two friends whose parents were market gardeners on Frogmore Road.

 

 

 

 

Lina and  Connie shared similar interests, always lived close to each other and delighted in each other’s company.

 

 

I extend sympathy to all members of Lina’s family.
I am grateful for Lina’s life and for the community to have access to the collection of her photos that recorded the life of the Veneto market gardeners at Lockleys. Her photos are a gift to us.

You can listen to an interview with Lina or read the transcript of the four interviews with her: Click here

 

Madeleine Regan
23 January 2022

 

 I’m continuing with the series on family photos and the lives of the Veneto market gardeners. In this third part, I focus on photos that represented the life in the community at ‘Lockleys’ during  the war, and soon after.

Gatherings of the Veneto community

I’m interested in photos of groups of Veneto market gardeners and the people they knew during and after the Second World War. I’m thankful that interviewees and others have given me permission to use the photos. By the mid-1940s, the pioneer families were established on their market gardens in the area they called ‘Lockleys’. Although there had been challenges for the community during the war years, the Veneto market gardeners continued to gather and celebrate and photos show aspects of their daily lives. Perhaps increasing numbers of people had cameras which might explain why there are more photos. After the war the families sponsored and welcomed new Veneto migrants who were leaving Italy in large numbers because of the destruction caused by the occupation and the poverty that followed especially in the Veneto region.

Photos of weddings
Studio photos were formal records of the wedding parties. During the war, Luigia Ballestrin and Eugenio Zalunardo married. Eugenio or Marena had arrived in 1927 and leased land on Grange Road for his market garden in the late 1930s. Luigia had accompanied her mother to Adelaide in 1938 when she was 23 years old.

The wedding photo in 1943 shows various members of the Ballestrin family. Although the war had created shortages and restrictions, the wedding group looks beautifully dressed. Thank you to Silvano Ballestrin for annotating the photo.

Marriage of Rosina Tonellato and Lui Santin 1945

In 1945, Rosina Tonellato married Lui Santin. Rosina was daughter of pioneers, Secondo Tonellato and Elisabetta Gatto. Lui was the eldest son of Giovanni Santin and Costantina Visentin. Both families had come from Caselle di Altivole. In the studio portrait, Lui’s father stands beside him and Rosina’s father stands beside her. The mothers were not included in this photo.

Women on Frogmore Road

Lina Marchioro took the photo of a group of women and children taken in mid 1940s. The Veneta women and child, Lina Ballestrin, are pictured with Rene Destro who had married a Veneto man. Rene was good friends with the Veneto market gardener families. The women were probably taking a break from working on the gardens. Thanks to Silvano Ballestrin for annotating the photo.

 Children on Frogmore Road

Lina Marchioro took the photo of the children who attended Johnny Marchioro’s fifth birthday in August 1945. I like the way that Lina included the glass houses in the background. The children hold oranges which would have been a special treat at the time.

 

The day after the marriage of Anna Mattiazzo and Vito Santin, 1949
It was tradition that the day after a wedding, relatives and friends would gather to finish drinking the beer and to eat food left over from the reception that had been held in a packing shed. In this photo, taken after the marriage of Anna Mattiazzo and Vito Santin in 1949, a group pose for a photo. There are mainly men, a mix of generations who had arrived before the war and post-war arrivals who the older Veneto generation called ‘new Australians.’ The eldest in the group is in the middle foreground, Giovanni Santin, who would have been 63 years of age. The young boys around him are from the Ballestrin, Marchioro and Piovesan and other families. The informality of the photo contrasts with a studio portrait or a snap taken outside a church after the wedding ceremony.

A gathering of families
Some people in the photo below of the large group are from market garden families and it could be a group who had migrated from Riese Pio X. I’ve talked to a few people about the photo which Chris Rebellato found in her parents’ collection.

The guess is that it was taken in the mid-late 1940s. Why has the group gathered? The photo was taken outdoors but the group has been arranged in a formal way. People are dressed smartly as though the photo was a record of a special occasion.

 

The images live on beyond the events and the lives of many of the people who are the subjects in the photos. They reflect the lives of a small migrant community living on the edges of Anglo Australia in Adelaide.

 

Madeleine Regan
9 January 2022

 

 

The year is closing and it’s appropriate to reflect on the past 12 months and the blogs on the website related to the Veneto market gardeners oral history project.

In January we held a gathering of Veneto market gardener families and it was a lovely social occasion at the Mater Christi parish hall, Seaton. About 40 people were present and for the first time, we welcomed grandchildren – it was great that Lina and Lui Campagnaro’s granddaughters were  there to learn about the Veneto market gardener community, see the connections between families and view the photo loop of wonderful old family photos that people have given me permission to use for the Veneto market gardeners’ project. Oh! And they tasted the delicious food that people so generously contributed to the event.

At the gathering, Angelo Piovesan spoke about the value of the website in maintaining the history of the community and the possibility of gaining support from the Veneto Club so that it is maintained into the future. It was pleasing that the Veneto Club agreed to provide financial support for the costs of the website. Thank you to Angelo for his advocacy. Fortunately, Michael Campbell continues to manage the website and gives his time voluntarily. I am very grateful for his assistance in maintaining the content, making it accessible and keeping the website safe. Michael has managed the website since 2014 and I thank him for his support – and his skills.

During 2021, a blog has been posted every two weeks. This year 12  blogs were written by guests. It is really wonderful that so many readers have either volunteered or accepted the invitation to write blogs.  And at times, people leave comments, and this shows that the website is becoming more interactive and a more lively community resource.

Through the year I’ve written  blogs about different subjects – stories of some of the families or relatives, reflections on the seasons and reports of unusual events on the  market gardens. I also used some of the research I had undertaken for my thesis and wrote about leisure activities of the market gardeners and returned Anglo Australian soldiers from World War I who were market gardeners in the area. And I have also written about some of the photos to highlight the lives of the Veneto families in different periods.

Thank you to everyone who contributed blogs to the website this year. I’ve been looking back and realise there is a great richness in the variety of subjects that were covered by guest bloggers. In March Linda De Marchi nee Cescato and Nives Caon nee Cescato wrote about their memories of boarding houses in the west end of the City of Adelaide where Italian men lived when they first arrived in Australia. Alex Bennett researched the vagón of the Tonellato family in April and wrote two blogs.

In May Aida Innocente, and her uncle and aunt, Gino and Mary Innocente, collaborated to write two blogs about about the steps involved in the ritual  of making salami.

Lynn and Gary Vanzo produced two blogs about the  story of the Vanzo family who originated from San Martino di Lupari and are connected to some of the Veneto market gardeners. In July, Michael Quirk who had lived in Garden Terrace, Lockleys, wrote two blogs about the friendships he made with some of the young Australian-born Italians who played football in 1959 for the Thebarton Young Christian Workers football team which won the 1959 Grand Final. Several of the young men were from market gardener families in the Lockleys area.

After I completed my PhD studies Michael Campbell wrote a blog in June about my thesis and how it developed from the 58 oral history interviews that have been gathered for the project since 2008.

 

In November the transnational connection was renewed with the blog that Cathy Crenna wrote about Italian migrants in Canada.

 

 

Finally, in December through the blog that Christine Rebellato nee Mattiazzo wrote, we learned about the Christmas traditions that originated in the Mattiazzo family.

One of the people who loved the Veneto market gardeners oral history project, Maria Rosa Tormena, died in March. I remember her and all the others who have been interviewed over the past 13 years. I value their contribution and generosity in providing information about their families and their connection to the pioneer Veneto market gardeners who arrived in Adelaide in the late 1920s.

And to 2022 … I invite you to consider writing a blog about your family or about memories of the Veneto market gardener community. Please contact me so we can discuss ideas.

I wish you all a happy new year. Buon anno!

Madeleine Regan
29 December 2021