My fondest childhood memory ..., page-121

A couple of final thoughts Dave

My family came from the hills near Mount Etna, a highly productive area, but after the Second World War, hungry abounded.

My father never went to school, instead he worked in nearby orchards and vineyards as soon as he was able to be of any use. His father made a small fortune in America and lost it just as quickly when he returned to his homeland.

My mother’s father spent a few months in America, but returned as he refused to be involved with characters of ill-repute. He settled on a farmstead in the district of Acireale, an attractive township near Catania, making a living with the help of his children by maintaining the land, animals, and crops for his absent landlord.

Poorly paid workers knew their hopes for a better future could only be achieved by migrating, and two years after my birth, our family joined the post-war surge of humanity that was headed for a life in the new world.

Most became citizens within the Americas but significant numbers arrived in Australia and South Africa. Along with European migrants and war refugees, we arrived in Australia in 1955, a boom-time, as workers were in great demand due to rapid expansions in agriculture, industry, and mining.

In the tropical north, land was being cleared for sugar cane production, while the food bowl, the Murray-Darling Basin, expansion seemed limitless. Major cities were growing and eventually most migrants gravitated to suburbs that provided support, a common language and plenty of their own kind for marriage.

The first arrivals experienced xenophobia and mistrust by the majority Anglo-Saxon population, but within two generations, migrants, denigrated as ‘Dagoes,’ had earned an important place in Australian society.

Marriage ties, well-educated children and new ways of cooking helped create the ever evolving and vibrant tapestry of a young and prosperous nation.

On arrival to our new land, we landed in Far North Queensland where my father did the dirty and physically demanding work of cutting sugar cane.

He endured that work for eight years, but for him it was just work, only the location was different. Living in a small town near Ingham, he cut cane until mechanization allowed sugarcane to be harvested without the need for manual cutters.

Without work, new opportunities for migrants like my father were needed and we moved to South Australia.

There was a small hotel in our township where older boys checked empty bottles disposed of at the rear of the building for any remaining drops of alcoholic drink.

We heard the loud chatter and antics of men who worked hard during the day as they socialized. They drank, sang, and became noisier into the early evening. Sometimes their voices were accompanied by angry outbursts and the hard sound of fists hitting human flesh.

Eventually, there was a short period of quiet after which the chatting and singing returned. In time, I came to understand the lives of those single men who had future wives and loved ones a long way from there, hopeful people who had just started their journeys in a new world, eventually heading families in the larger towns and cities to become part of the fabric of a vibrant, growing Australia.

So many memories were contained in the surrounds of that little village made up of only a couple of streets. For eight years we were greeted by friendly European faces, cocooned from the real Australia, but at the age of ten, it was time to leave that child’s paradise for a new life in South Australia where we came to meet the real Australia, a place where tight-lipped and sneering faces abounded.

On a visit some thirty years later, every part of our forest playground and nearby swamps had disappeared, sugar cane being the only vegetation outside the village.

Farmers used machines to harvest the cane and no longer needing to be burnt, it was planted even closer to dwellings. A small hub made busy by the presence of itinerant cane cutters stood eerily silent.

Businesses that once flourished, the bakery, corner store and even the school had become victims of progress and the motor car taking residents to Ingham for their needs.

Like the island of Sicily, this former paradise had vanished, and the reasons were much the same; the desire for humans to take all they could from nature with little concern for the future.