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Figure 64: Nazzarena Mirandola and her daughters at Morley Park, c. 1962. Photo
courtesy Nazzarena Mirandola.
154
The emotional reactions of many of the women were due to the environment. The
heat, the boiling tap water, the willi willi winds, the hot nights, the cyclones and flooding
during the wet season, the miles of Spinifex, the flies and other insects, the blue haze
created by the asbestos, the stray cattle, the kangaroos and emus, the snakes and
racehorse goannas and the red dust were variously mentioned in the women’s stories. After
the initial shock of the accommodation, adapting to the native animals was another concern
for some. Gina Martino spoke of her fear of her uninvited tenant, a racehorse goanna, which
had moved in under the Martino’s house. Yet one reason to welcome the goanna’s presence
was its preference for the snakes, kangaroos, emus and dingoes as well as insects.
Goannas have no appetite for humans!
Venera Uculano, unlike most of the Italian women, loved the outback. It was in 1963
during a nine day holiday to the Pilbara region that she fell in love with the north — a
connection she still feels to this day. Venera enjoyed the adventure of travelling on gravel
roads (still unsealed in the 1960s, once you ventured beyond Carnarvon) and traversing
crossings flooded by the rains. It was a different life to the one she knew as a secretary in
Perth. The native animals and the spectacular landscape created a lasting impression. Upon
her return, she went to the A.B.A. Limited Office in Perth to apply for a job in Wittenoom. A
few months later, in October 1963, she had become A.B.A. Limited’s secretary in Wittenoom.
Venera’s recollection of Saturday mornings led her also to equate Wittenoom to a
Wild West town. In contrast to Nazzarena Mirandola’s account, she was awestruck at the
spectacle she witnessed during Saturday morning shopping. It was then that people from the
surrounding cattle stations came to town. Venera recalled the Aboriginal men who came into
town “wearing their bright satin shirts, tight trousers and Williams Cuban heeled shoes. One
would think it was America’s West. The women were dressed nicely in their bright colours”.
19
The outback climate had influenced Venera Uculano’s decision to go to Wittenoom.
She loved the hot Wittenoom summers, with temperatures reaching between 40 to 45
degrees Celsius. The wet season and the spectacular storms accompanied by the sound of
the torrential rains on her corrugated iron roof, she found mesmerizing. Trees were often
19
A letter I received from Venera Uculano, 8 February 2009.
155
uprooted during those storms and strong winds. None of the other participants would
mention this aspect of the climate. They, instead, focused on the overwhelming heat, which
struck most people upon their arrival, as Valentina Giannasi’s ill-preparedness for it in 1962
demonstrates:
We took the DC 3 but I didn’t know where I was
going…..I was well dressed…..I had a woollen suit…
because my sister was a dressmaker… and I had a coat
and gloves…..black leather…..the bag…..which I still
have…..(she laughs) I still have it!…..And we leave
[Perth]…..Our stuff came by truck…..We had suitcases
when we went on the plane which arrives at Geraldton…
The heat starts… and the further north we went the hotter
it got… We didn’t have clothes to change into.
20
One of Lea Guagnin’s most vivid memories of Wittenoom was that the heat “melted
butter in half an hour.”
21
On more than one occasion during our times together, she
exclaimed: “The heat! The heat!” It was so hot that when her husband, Egizio was working
night shift, she and her daughter Fulvia slept with the door and the windows left open;
something she would never do today. Cecilia Bonomi echoed Lea’s feelings. “In the
beginning it’s strange, very strange.”
22
It was so hot that at night Cecilia wet the sheets to
keep cool; only to make her perspire even more. Eventually, she explained, “e poi un po’ alla
volta si abitua, no”?
23
Valentina Giannasi adapted too:
(laughing) The heat… slowly, slowly we got used to it… I
lived there willingly… There was the shop… the hotel…
the church… The children went to school… and we got
used to it… Because not all… many cried… The husband
would send the wife back because they couldn’t tolerate
the place… You know… really… the water was good…
Then we were young.
24
Lea Guagnin’s opinion of the water quality differs from Valentina’s. “And the water!
What a disaster!” Lea tried a variety of soaps without much success, in water she described
as salty. After having travelled kilometres from its source, the water was at boiling point when
it reached the town, making it impossible to use immediately for bathing or drinking. For
bathing the water was collected in the bath tub, and left until it reached a tolerable
temperature. It amused Lina Tagliaferri now as she recalled that the already hot water meant
20
Interview with Valentina Giannasi, Perth, October 2009.
21
Interview with Lea Guagnin, Perth, October 2009.
22
Interview with Cecilia Bonomi, Perth, October 2009.
23
And then a little at a time, you get used to it.
24
Interview with Valentina Giannasi, Perth, October 2009.
156
it took much less time to cook spaghetti. As drinking water, it was another matter. Cecilia
Bonomi put the water in the fridge to cool down, while Lina Tagliaferri had canvas bags to
which a pipe was attached for decanting. She wet the bag which the air cooled, making the
water cold enough to drink. Lina had two of these canvas bags hung on opposite sides of her
house. In the morning they used the one on the shady side of the house, and the other in the
afternoon, when the sun had moved.
Keeping cool required some ingenuity. Residents employed practical solutions to
insulate the houses from the harshness of the sun and to lower the internal temperature.
Verandas were covered with chicken wire, on which vines were then trained. A sprinkler
placed on top of the roof trickled water over the vines lowering the temperature; when the
winds blew a similar effect was achieved. Cecilia Bonomi recalled their Coolgardie Safe was
the only efficient way to keep their house cool. A.B.A Limited used the same Spinifex cooler
in the hot, old corrugated iron building where Venera Uculano worked. She also had one at
home, on which she placed vegetables to keep cool. The cooler’s only drawback was its
inability to regulate the temperature. Venera remembers turning it on before going to the
movies and returning to a freezing cold house!
Unlike Venera’s love for life in the outback, most of the women stayed because of
their economic circumstances; they had no choice but to make do.
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