67
who never remarried. She relied on the extended family for support. In exchange, Lina’s
mother “served” her brothers, while they worked in the Val D’Aosta mines.
15
The children of the late Attilio Oprandi shared their father’s tragic story. As a young
boy Attilio had left Lombardy and gone to France with his family, where he worked as an
apprentice baker. Within a few years Attilio and his younger brother and sister lost their
mother, paternal grandmother and finally their father, possibly to tuberculosis. The
maternal
grandparents arrived from Italy. They placed Attilio’s seven year old sister, Giacomina, in an
orphanage in Belgium, while he and his brother were taken back to Italy (see figure 8). They
would never see their sister again. She died in Belgium. By 1945 Attilio’s brother, Celeste,
had also died — the victim of an accident. Now, in his early twenties, Attilio was left to his
own devices. He survived, but not without considerable hardship and resourcefulness.
Also in Lombardy, Emilia Pagani, whose family never emigrated, recalled the loss of
two family members to pneumonia: an illness which could have been avoided had the family
had access to penicillin.
16
The sale of contraband was mentioned by two
children of a
Guardia di Finanza,
17
stationed in northern Italy near the Swiss border. Contraband items
included coffee, cigarettes and the much sought after penicillin. Once it appeared that the
Guardia di Finanza’s wife could die from an infection, he too bought penicillin from a
contraband supplier.
Adults and children accepted any opportunity to earn money for the family. Lina
Tagliaferri’s husband, Beppe, the oldest of nine children, commenced work at a young age.
As she recounted it,
Neighbours of my mother-in-law had a butcher shop. One
of the five sons [of the owner] asked who wanted
to…help. So Beppe after school, at the age of eight,
would…help for a piece of liver, a heart, a piece of meat
to make a stew. Then he got the job of butcher by the
time he was 16, but they didn’t want to give him a wage.
So he went and became a miner… He went to work firstly
pushing the wagons out from the mines, which removed
the material. After you had been working for a time, one
15
The notion of ‘
servire’—to cater to all the needs of males in Italian families is expressed using this
verb, by both southern and northern Italian women born pre-World War 2, in particular. I recall it being
used by my mother and her peers — all born in the 1920s. It was used by women in this research,
whether from the north or the south of Italy.
16
Interview with Emilia Pagani, Italy, November 2008.
17
Italian Military Police who deal with infringements relating to income tax and Customs.
68
day a miner would say: ‘Try’… He didn’t go to miner’s
school. He learned it from others.
18
Many of the Wittenoom Italians developed
a range of skills, in much the same way Beppe
had. Opportunities in local villages to work for a butcher, a blacksmith, a baker, a carpenter
or any other trade were quickly taken up. Attilio Oprandi worked as an apprentice baker, but
also became a proficient horse handler and eventually a miner. Umberto Favero finished his
scuole medie (junior high school) and then worked for two years on his father’s farm. Given
the opportunity to
learn bricklaying, Umberto left the farm. Lina Nesa’s brothers learned the
blacksmith’s trade, but were only paid a pittance.
Employment opportunities for young women, on the other hand, were limited and
differed from region to region. From participants’ accounts across the Italian regions, it
emerged that young girls remained home. They learned to sew, helped out on the farm, and
looked after younger siblings. Once old enough outside the home, their employment
opportunities varied. Participants from the south and central Italy obtained paid work in local
factories. In Calabria Gina Martino worked at the pasta factory in her home town of Siderno.
Valentina Giannasi from Castelnuovo di Garfagnana in Tuscany was employed at the town’s
cheese factory. There was otherwise little prospect of employment for those who
remained in
the south and central Italy, apart from domestic service. In northern Italy they also worked as
domestic servants, or as machinists in textile factories; the alternative was migration to
Switzerland. In the industrialised north women like Caterina Bellini and Lina Tagliaferri found
work in the textile mills of Ponte Nossa in Lombardy’s Seriana valley or in the nearby Val
D’Aosta region. Lina Nesa, who lived in Lombardy’s Montagna in Valtellina, worked in the
weaving mills of nearby Sondrio piano. There was also employment
at the dye works in
Piazzo, which produced the blue overalls worn by tradesmen. The problem was the limited
positions: where a woman had replaced someone who had gone to war, the position reverted
to the male worker upon his return.
18
Interview with Lina Tagliaferri, Perth, October 2009.
