Veneto market gardeners 1927

 

Last month I submitted my thesis after five years of research and writing. My thesis is called:
‘I buy this piece of ground here’: Establishing family market gardens and transplanting Veneto identity in Adelaide’s western suburbs 1920s – 1970s.

My thesis examines the formation of the community of market gardeners at Kidman Park and Flinders Park between the wars. The 18 men and one woman who migrated from villages in the provinces of Treviso and Vicenza between 1926 and 1928 did not all know each other until they lived in boarding houses in the west end of the city of Adelaide. The pioneers faced the harsh years of the Depression and had to find work where ever they could including rural areas of South Australia, Victoria and north Queensland and the Adelaide hills. By the end of the 1930s all the pioneers had leased land for market gardens just north of the River Torrens in the area that they called Lockleys. Today we know that locality as Kidman Park and Flinders Park.

My thesis focuses on the market gardeners in the interwar years, a period that has not been written about very much in Australian migration history. I am grateful to the 60 members of three generations who recorded oral history interviews:

the pioneers or first generation, those who arrived as children (1.5 generation) and the second generation born in Australia. It is fortunate that we have the voices of Vittoria and Angeline Marchioro, the only pioneers to be recorded for another project in 1984.

Oral history interviews
In their interviews the family members speak of their everyday lives and include details of families acquiring land and working hard to develop their market gardens, learning techniques and planting new crops, moving glasshouses and selling vegetables at market which was unfamiliar since most of the pioneers had come from very poor families where there was no excess. The narrators recall celebrating weddings, first communions, confirmations and birthdays in packing sheds and they proudly talk about their families and the strong community networks that supported them although there were challenges living in an often hostile political, social and economic new world in Australia.

Using archival records
As well as the oral histories, I used archival materials like family records and documents about land ownership. In 2018 I was fortunate to receive a scholarship to research in Italy. Thanks to several relatives of the veneti who helped me in the Veneto region, I located records of births, marriages and deaths from parishes and comuni or local councils. In Australia I had access to records from the National Archives of Australia including arrival documents, applications for naturalisation, applications to own land, records from the war and conscription of some of the men into the Civil Aliens Corps and their service for the war effort in remote areas.

Books that were important
My research draws on books about Italians in Australia to provide a wider understanding of the situation of migrants between the wars, the experiences of the Depression, World War II and post-war migration.

 

Two books about veneti in Australia were particularly helpful – From Paesani to Global Italians: Veneto Migrants in Australia by Loretta Baldassar and Ros Pesman. The other, by Annamaria Davine, ‘Vegnimo da Conco ma Simo Veneti’: A Study of the Immigration and Settlement of the Veneti in Central and West Gippsland 1925-1970, covers a similar period that I focus on in my thesis.

I often consulted Desmond O’Connor’s No Need to be Afraid: Italian Settlers in South Australia between 1839 and the Second World War.

 

 

Thank you to …
I am pleased to have completed the thesis and I am grateful to many people in Adelaide and in the Veneto region for their help as I gathered interviews, research and ideas. My project actually began in 2006 when Aida Innocente assisted me with interviewing Angelo, her Dad about the family half-case factory. Aida also put me in touch with Johnny and Eleonora Marchioro.

Johnny and Eleonora showed interest in this project right from the start and made it possible for me to meet other sons and daughters of the pioneers and assisted with many aspects including the exhibition we held in 2011, interviews and presentations with Frankie Ballestrin and Bruno Piovesan. I am fortunate that so many people agreed to be interviewed and record their memories of growing up on the market gardens and aspects of migration stories. Thanks to Michael Campbell for technical assistance and to all the other people who assisted throughout the last five years!

My thesis tells the story about the community of Veneto market gardeners. It examines the veneti who migrated during the interwar years, a period that has not been written about very much in Australian migration history. It focuses on the creation of the formation of a paese that reflected their solidarity and resilience and their continuing connection to their families in the Veneto region. It also raises new questions about migration, the significance of land and what it means for different generations of migrant families to adjust and belong in Australia.

Late in May I submitted my thesis for examination. When that process is complete I will put a note on the website advising how more of the results of my research can be accessed.

Madeleine Regan
27 June 2021

 

 

 

 

LIFE IN JERVOIS – LINO AND IRENE

Mum and Dad were married in September 1954 and after several months living with the Vanzo family in Parkside they purchased a dairy farm in Jervois. Ernesto and Adele moved to Jervois with Mum and Dad and they remained living with us in the family home at Jervois until they died.

Dad owned a motorbike and sidecar and Mum recalled many hairy trips in the sidecar (pregnant with me) on the old road through the Adelaide hills. I was born in 1955. I vaguely remember doing the trip with them as a youngster on the motorbike to Adelaide. We were in Jervois for exactly one year to the day when in September 1956 the River Murray broke it banks and Jervois flooded.

We relocated to Mt Gambier with our dairy cows for 12 months on a share-farming arrangement. My Mum hated the cold and limited facilities. My brother Robert was born in Mount Gambier. Returning home, then came the big job of draining the swamps, fixing the fences, building a new dairy, reseeding pastures and ‘getting going’ again.

My brothers Dennis and Allan arrived in 1959 and 1963. There were 8 of us in a tiny four- roomed old home. The 1960s were good years along the river at Jervois as people prospered after the devastation of the flood.

Dad and Mum made plans to build a new house. Half of the house was paid for in pounds and the other half was in dollars and we moved into the new house in late 1966. In the 1970s Mum and Dad were able to expand the dairies and purchased highland properties for hay crops and running livestock.

The Jervois community loved Dad’s jovial personality and he volunteered in many organisations supplying his concreting skills at the Jervois football club, primary school, bowling club and the Catholic Church in Tailem Bend. Dad really felt that he was 100% accepted when I was selected as Captain of the Junior Colts football team in 1969.

Every winter we killed a pig and made salami. Dad had a small smokehouse. Every autumn we made the trip to Langhorne Creek to buy grapes to make red wine. Dad’s cellar was well known and often visited by local friends in the Italian community. The Gazzolas, Brions, Chesos, Fabbians and Antonellos were lifelong friends and neighbours. Dad and Mum loved company and had frequent Veneto visitors from Adelaide who loved the beautiful cheese from the Jervois Cheese Factory (10lb, cloth covered rinded cheese.) It kept well and was highly regarded. Dad’s cousins from the Bergamin, Conci, Tonellato and Stocco families loved making the trip to Jervois over the years.

Dad never went back to Italy. For many years he only had memories of hard times.

Just as Dad and Mum were thinking about taking it easier, and maybe making the trip back to Italy, Dad took ill and died when he was 61. It was one month before their 40^th wedding anniversary. Sadly, Dad didn’t get to see the grandchildren grow up and marry. He would have been so proud of them and would have loved his great grandchildren! We have lovely memories and he is spoken about often. Mum is 86 and sadly has dementia. They were both hard workers and loved their family dearly.

Gary and Lynn Vanzo
13 June 2021

 

 

Guest writers, Gary and Lynn Vanzo, have kindly contributed two blogs about the Vanzo family from the province of Padova.

Reading through Madeleine’s blogs and listening to the oral history interviews, there are family connections to the Veneto market gardeners and the shared migrant stories from the Veneto people, even though my family didn’t live in Adelaide.

THE EARLY YEARS
My father, Lino Angelo Vanzo was born in 1932 in San Martino di Lupari in the Province of Padua in the Veneto region. He had an older brother Giuseppe (Beppi) who was 4 years older. Their parents Ernesto and Adele (Giradin) were also from San Martino di Lupari. Ernesto’s parents were Giovanni and Caterina (Antonello) (pictured above).

Dad was 7 when World War II began and he was 13 when it ended, so his early memories were of tough times, little food, and the constant fear of the Fascists and the Germans.

He learnt the trade of shoe-making, but the pay was meagre and overtime was always encouraged, but the extra pay rarely arrived. Other work opportunities were hard to find and mainly seasonal in the years after the war.

 

AUSTRALIA
In 1949 after much discussion with his parents, Giuseppe left for Australia. He had family contacts through the Bergamin family. Ernesto’s older sister (Amabile Bergamin) and her family were already settled in Adelaide. He also had his sponsor Mr Andrea Antonello, in Jervois.

Dad arrived in Australia in 1951 after Uncle Beppi established himself in Adelaide and worked for the Floreani Brothers where Dad was also offered work . When he received his first pay, Dad calculated on the wall in the workshop the hours he would have had to work in Italy to earn the same money he earned in a week in Adelaide. He couldn’t believe it!

Ernesto and Adele followed in March 1954 and they lived in Liston Street Parkside with Dad and Uncle Beppi and his wife Aunty Mary.

While Uncle Beppi and Aunty Mary remained in Adelaide, the story of Dad shifts to Jervois.

JERVOIS
Visiting their sponsor, Mr Andrea Antonello in Jervois, Dad and Uncle Beppi were told about the  need for workers with concreting experience. In the early 1950’s dairies along the River Murray were being renovated and brought up to the modern standards required at the time.

They were able to secure weekend work at Jervois working on the dairies for local farmers. Dad’s childhood friend Mariano Antonello worked with them as well. This is how Dad met my mother Irene Crivellaro and her family.

CRIVELLARO FAMILY
Mum’s parents were Attilio (Archie) and Maria (Ceccato)and they were from Galliera Veneta in the province of Padova.  Attilio had arrived in Adelaide in 1927 and had lived and worked in the Adelaide Hills around Ironbank and Scotts Creek area for the Slater and Morgan families. He and Maria were married by proxy and she arrived in Adelaide in 1933.

Mum was born in 1934 in Stirling. On a trip with the Morgan’s to visit family in Wellington, Attilio accompanied them. When he saw the dairies and river flats along the Murray, he immediately saw the potential and asked around for any work opportunities. He eventually secured a share-farming position with the Gale family and in 1941 Attilio, Maria, Mum and her sister Nilda moved to Jervois. They eventually purchased the property.

In the next blog we write about my parents, Lino and Irene, and their life at Jervois.

 

 

Gary and Lynn Vanzo
30 May 2021