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Chapter Six - Childhood in Wittenoom
I do not have a hate for the town [of Wittenoom] or the
surroundings. My mum may have a different view, but
she was there to work. I worked a lot. My wife says I
never had a childhood. The reason I like [Wittenoom] is
because that is the place where I had a childhood. In Italy
I was sick a lot. My father worked overseas. My mum had
to work. I would be left with one of my aunts. Apart from
some cousins [I] never really socialised. Somehow it
couldn’t or didn’t happen. Up there I had lots of mates. [I]
got up to all sorts of mischief — a lot of memorable
moments
.
1
The mining town had given many Italian families the possibility to reunite. Unaware of the
health consequences that working and living in Wittenoom would bring in the future, they had
taken their families and given birth to more children during their stay.
The experiences of 25 children — born or brought to the town — inform this chapter.
Six of the 25 were born in Italy, and one in Alexandria, Egypt. Seven were
born in Perth or
country Western Australia and then taken to Wittenoom. Another eight were born in the
mining town, while the mothers of three children, prompted by previous difficult childbirths in
the Wittenoom hospital, flew to Perth for the births and then returned to Wittenoom. Seven of
these children shared what they remembered of their time there. They and their parents
made mention of the others during my fieldwork. Twenty thousand men and women lived in
Wittenoom, as well as nearly 6,000 children.
2
Those who were
children in Wittenoom are
now in their fifties, sixties and early seventies.
The parents who participated in this research all declared they would never have
taken their children — or themselves for that matter — had they known about the dangers of
asbestos exposure.
3
Their claim is difficult to refute, given that the
Italians went to Wittenoom
1
Interview with Alvaro Giannasi, Perth, October 2009.
2
Vojakovic, R. (2000), 'The Human Cost of Asbestos Disease', a paper delivered at the
Osasco
Conference, Brazil, p. 3.
3
Information from this chapter was adapted for a journal paper I had published in November 2011: Di
Pasquale, Op Cit.
190
in the first place to create a better future for their families. While not related to asbestos
exposure, extracts from the Wittenoom cemetery register reveal childhood deaths occurred.
4
Despite the children having witnessed the deaths of family and friends because of an
asbestos-related disease, only a few touched upon the uncertain future they face when I
spoke with them. Instead their narratives reveal a connection with the town which has
persisted to this day. As one participant put it, they had childhood experiences “the city kids
could only dream of”. Family photographs, along with those supplied by the
Asbestos
Diseases Society of Australia and the wife of one keen Wittenoom photographer, the late
Toni Ranieri, illustrate the children’s stories or fill in gaps which there would otherwise have
been in this chapter. The childhood memories of several participants have, nevertheless,
remained vivid because of the emotional impact of their particular experiences.
In piecing together their childhood, the now adult children are aware that many of
their memories are the result of popular family stories, their parents’ promptings and
photographs.
5
The focus and experiences of the children in Wittenoom are of a different
nature to those of the men and women. For the children, who still retained memories of life in
Italy, the freedom associated with being
in Wittenoom was considerable, and particularly
notable in the boys’ stories. The stories of the boys and girls contain common elements,
despite certain topics seeming to be a function of the child’s gender and, more particularly,
their age while in Wittenoom.
The girls’ stories often lack the detail of those of the boys’. This may be because the
girls were granted less freedom than the boys, were too young while in Wittenoom to
remember, too much time has passed or they may have judged events as unremarkable and
consequently failed to share them with me (see figure 107 girls dancing). The stories,
especially among the
younger children, suggest an idyllic experience in the tightly-knit mining
community, while their parents worked to achieve the family’s
sistemazione. Importantly
Wittenoom had given many Italian children back their previously absent father.
4
Wittenoom cemetery register from 1952 to 1962 (supplied by resident Lorraine Thomas during my
visit to Wittenoom in September, 2010.) Between 1953 and 1962 of twenty-three listed burials, eight
were those of children from newborn to two and a half years of age.
5
See Maynes, Pierce & Laslett,
Op Cit. p. 39
. They posit that the construction of self is closely
associated with learning how to produce self-narratives which are first articulated as “memory talk”
within the family, which includes photographs and the like along with stories told in conversation.
