157
As some Italian families stayed in Wittenoom for longer periods than first planned,
they found ways to economise, despite the high cost of living in the isolated town. Lina
recalled: “
E` passato un anno, passati due, tre e si comincia ad abituarsi e si sta là”.
27
Her
family lived frugally, in the knowledge that their savings would eventually bring about a better
sistemazione elsewhere. With their departure from Wittenoom in the late 1950s, they had a
fully paid
off comfortable home, not far from the city of Perth. Lina explained their strategy:
If you were trying to save, you could not go to the store to
buy everything. What you wanted was not always there,
in any case. Often people leaving would sell items. It was
common to go to see if anything was suitable and buy it.
But it was all other people’s stuff.
28
Since Lina had travelled from Italy to Wittenoom by plane, she had been limited in what she
could bring. She had arrived with only 30 kilos of luggage. She did not have saucepans, and
at the time of her arrival in 1951, neither did Wittenoom’s General Store. Lina and her
husband
si sono arrangiati — they made do. To cook spaghetti her husband had taken an
empty pickled vegetables’ tin, turned down the sides and added a handle.
Subsequently,
they would buy some second hand aluminium saucepans and yellow Johnson plates (see
figure 65). Her husband also salvaged two badly burned saucepans from the Wittenoom tip.
Lina scrubbed them till they shone like new (see figure 66). “I still have them. I polished them
for weeks and weeks till they were clean again”, she said proudly. “You need water and
soap, but you also need
l’olio di gomito’…l’olio di gomito!!!”!
29
Lina’s sister-in-law had instead
sent away to a Perth store for saucepans. The
store sent an enamelled set, which rusted
once they had become chipped. Lina commented, “They would send us stuff that they
couldn’t sell”!
With only basic refrigeration available, storing food and
vegetables was a constant
challenge in the heat. Despite the availability of refrigerators for purchase from Wittenoom’s
General Store, the cheaper alternatives, kerosene fridges or the Coolgardie safe were used
to store perishables. Lina Tagliaferri recalled that the kerosene fridge let off unpleasant
fumes and required regular cleaning. The fruit and vegetables arrived by two means: a
27
Interview with Lina Tagliaferri, Perth, November 2008. A year passed, then two, three and then you
start to get used to it and you stay there.
28
Interview with Lina Tagliaferri, Perth, November 2008.
29
Elbow grease…elbow grease!!!! Interview with Lina Tagliaferri, Perth, November 2008.
158
monthly delivery by ship to Roebourne and then a three hour drive to the town and with the
weekly truck deliveries by road from Perth. Potatoes,
onions and fruit, mainly oranges and
Granny Smith apples, arrived once a month by ship.
30
Residents were allowed a dozen
oranges and two pounds [.9 of a kilogram] of apples and similar amounts of potatoes and
onions. If on the second day there were still supplies the townspeople were allowed to buy
further provisions. At her husband’s suggestion, Lina used to return to the General Store for
two or three days to purchase more, if produce was still available, in order to secure
sufficient supplies in the intervening period between deliveries. This was particularly
necessary in the wet season when truck deliveries stopped because of the flooded roads.
After explaining her purchasing
and storing routine, Lina pronounced the dictum
which underpinned the survival of many Italian families in the inhospitable climate, or for any
other challenge which presented itself: “
bisognava arrangiarsi in qualunque sia maniera”!
31
There were things, nevertheless, on which they would not compromise, such as the
purchase of meat. Lina’s husband had worked as a butcher in Italy and Switzerland and
recognized a good cut of meat. Lina referred to the butcher who tried to sell the poorer
quality cuts of meat to the Italians: a situation which created some tension
until the butcher
realized he could not deceive them. Both Lina Tagliaferri and Cecilia Bonomi persisted until
they were sold good quality meat: when they asked for a specific cut of meat, the butcher
gave it to them.
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: 
