151
You know people are very nasty sometimes... In
Wittenoom... they make a lot of money but before they go
they break the wall... they make things on the floor.
Like most who went to Wittenoom, economic necessity had dictated the Guagnins’ decision
to go there; otherwise, the family would never have stayed. With noticeable
emphasis on the
word “
never” Lea explained:
I never
been in such a position in my life!... I didn’t say
anything... only tears was coming down like this (she
points to her eyes)... My husband console me, but he too
was upset... We did it because we had to.
11
Names mentioned on more than one occasion during my fieldwork were those of Mrs
Nelda Caffieri from Rio Marina, on the Island of Elba, and Mrs Panizza and Mrs Mosconi
from the Trentino Alto Adige region. Nelda Caffieri, her husband, Romelio, and their two
children, Giovanni and Maria, arrived in Wittenoom in May 1951. Nelda’s husband and her
brother, Lazzarino Tamagni, had been recruited by ABA Limited’s Wittenoom mine manager
during his trip to Italy earlier in 1951. Both men had spent their lives working
as coal miners,
while Nelda sold coal from the front room of the family’s house.
12
The women from Trentino
Alto Adige began to arrive around this same period to join their husbands, who had also
been recruited by ABA Limited.
13
Nelda’s daughter, Maria, recalled that
her mother and the
women from the Trentino Alto Adige cried for many days after their arrival, distraught at what
they had found. As they adapted, these women would offer solace and help to many other
Italian women who came after them. Lea Guagnin recalled the Caffieris’ help upon her
family’s arrival in 1957:
The Caffieris… they lend us a couple of bed… and we
put some…..doona on the floor…..and then my husband
went… he was coming back from work…..he was to
bringing the ammunition box that were wood… and they
put one close to the other until I made a bed.
14
For Cecilia Bonomi, having to adapt was not new. By then in her early twenties,
Wittenoom was just another piece
of her migration jigsaw, in an attempt to achieve
sistemazione and importantly, to rejoin her husband.
11
Interview with Lea Guagnin, Perth, October 2009.
12
Interview with Maria Detoni and Nadia Delaurentis, Perth, December 2010.
13
Hills, Op Cit. See Chapter 4.
14
Interview with Lea Guagnin, Perth, October 2009.
152
[It was] another world (a tone of resignation) but what can
you do? After you get used to it… I’d already seen a bit…
I was born in France…..grown in France…..returned to
Italy with my parents…..in ’35… after…..I went to school
in Italy…..Then when the war had finished we started to
travel, to go and look for work in other countries… and so
I also went to Switzerland [for work]… Mario, my
husband,…..He took me to our place [in Wittenoom]…..
Ti
porto nella villa adesso che ho pitturato io!!! La baracca
era sua…..baracca.
15
Cecilia is philosophical about the
baracca in which she had to live:
Ehi… well, they [the houses] were all the same.
Bisogna
dire…..non sono solo io.....Siamo tutti uguali…..e allora
bisogna rassegnarsi…..dopo avevo mio marito che mi
voleva bene e…..what I worrying about?
Una
casa…..una casa se ne fanno ancora.
16
Nazzarena Mirandola and her two daughters arrived in Wittenoom in 1962, a few
months after her husband, Gino Selle. She had had to finalize the sale of
their Morley Park
home in Perth, where they had lived for four years (see figure 64). Her husband had rented
what Nazzarena described as a big house with four or five rooms. In contrast to Cecilia
Bonomi’s summation of the home her husband had prepared Nazzarena’s focus differed, she
explained that they were “long houses... also with cooling... It was hot... In any case, the
house wasn’t bad”. It
was the town of Wittenoom, on the other hand, which was a shock for
Nazzarena. She equated Wittenoom to being like “
il Wild West... fuori dal mondo”.
17
The
climate was unbearable: two months of the year it rained and the humidity it created was
“
una cosa pazzesca”.
18
Even now fifty years later, she recalled that it was always hot.
15
This was said mostly in Italian. I translated all but the last section: “I’ll take you to the home I have
painted…..The shed was his…..shed.” Her husband had used the word
‘villa’ to describe their home.
In Italian “
villa” refers to a freestanding dwelling. Cecilia conveys her feelings regarding the ‘
villa’ by
her use of the word “
baracca” — shed. Interview with Cecilia Bonomi, Bullsbrook, October 2009.
16
I have to say that it wasn’t only me. So you have to get over it. I had my husband who loved
me…You can always create another home. Interview with Cecilia Bonomi, Bullsbrook, October 2009.
17
Interview with Nazzarena Mirandola, Roverchiara, Italy, November 2008. It was a bit like the Wild
West…out of this world.
18
Just crazy
