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sensitive way of obtaining their narratives, and make relevant use of the Motley Rice
documents, along with those I would obtain from archival searches. From there followed the
fieldwork; finding the participants would prove akin to detective work. The surviving
Wittenoom Italians were situated
in Perth and Italy, while I was in Melbourne thousands of
kilometres away. The search involved a circuitous, serendipitous and often synchronistic
path to their doors, providing the rich data which inform this thesis.
Early in my candidature I decided to focus on the impact of the Wittenoom asbestos
mine from the perspective of the Italian transnational workers. I would reconstruct aspects of
the lives of these immigrants and their families before, during and
after their time at
Wittenoom. Once I had made the decision to speak to ex-Wittenoom workers and residents
and others involved in the Wittenoom tragedy to ascertain Wittenoom’s role in their lives and
deaths, my choice of approach gravitated to an oral history one. My method would be semi-
structured interviews. I would also examine the Motley Rice Plaintiffs’ Exhibits I had at my
disposal. These might shed new light on what was known at that time regarding asbestos-
related diseases and other matters related to Wittenoom’s history. I
found the number of
documents to be read daunting and the task made more onerous by the fact that they were
in no discernible order. In time I would order them chronologically, to allow me to weave
them through the participants’ stories.
In addition to these documents, during my first year I planned to conduct archival and
library searches to see what other documents and texts I might find. In
Melbourne there were
the State Records Office in North Melbourne, the library of the Italian Historical Society in
Carlton and the library and archives of the Italian Australian Institute in McLeod. By August
2008 I had also made arrangements with Gary Billingham in the Perth Office of the National
Archives of Australia to view files relating to Wittenoom during my visit to Perth. I also wanted
to visit the State Record Office to search the files of the Department of Mines, as well as the
Battye Library, located in the State Library of Western Australia.
On the
advice of my supervisors, I made initial contact with two key people: Dr Enzo
Merler, an Italian researcher who had transcripts of interviews he had conducted with 130
repatriated Wittenoom Italians, which I hoped to access. He would eventually supply me with
48
the names of 22 ex-workers. I also rang Robert Vojakovic, the president of the Asbestos
Diseases Society of Australia, in Perth. While he could not supply me with names, for
confidentiality reasons, he told me of two annual events organized by the ADSA in Perth
where I could be introduced to ex-Wittenoom workers and their families: the
Ecumenical
Service held in November, and the ADSA picnic at Whiteman Park, north of Perth held in
early December. I also contacted several academics in Perth and in Italy.
I left for Italy in late October, 2008. I would spend three weeks in the northern Italian
regions of Lombardy, Trentino Alto Adige and Veneto contacting and meeting with several of
those on Dr Merler’s list. I then returned to Australia. I stopped in Perth where
I would spend
a further three weeks looking for participants and carrying out archival searches. During the
course of the next three years, constrained by finances, I would confine my travel to Perth for
three week visits to follow up potential leads or revisit participants I had met previously. In
2010 I visited Perth twice. I had finally decided that I should see Wittenoom for myself,
despite my concerns regarding asbestos exposure. This concern was mediated by the
presence of Emilia Oprandi who had expressed interest in seeing where her father had
started out his life in Australia. She is the daughter of the late Attilio Oprandi, one of first
group of miners recruited for Wittenoom who arrived there in February 1951 from Lombardy.
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