Goodbye Italy my native country
Dear readers, this is just another chapter of my life journey
Said goodbye to Italy my native country
And I left Italy my native country to go to a far away land called Australia, this is how my life journey continued, after living my youth in a farm in Southern Italy.
Welcome to my hub of goodbye Italy my
country and goodbye Genzano my native town.
In our life time we have to make many
decisions according to what is happening around us, one of these decisions I
had to make when I decided to migrate to Australia; in those times to migrate
from one country to another was a very serious decision, because the
generations before us usually stayed all their life in the towns were they were
born, so for me and for all those that wanted to migrate was not an easy
decision to make, but in the end everyone made his own decisions and I said
goodbye to my motherland and migrated to Australia.
Today to understand the reasons why I
migrated to Australia in the sixties, one has to read those articles I have
already written in hub pages, or at least one of our earlier articles called,
Wheat farming the modern way, where you could compare how hard it was in those
days to earn a living in the farms, when one compare that to the modern ways of
farming especially here in Australia; this is the link, Farming today compared to the old way
Anyhow, today the same decision would have
been easier to make, because nowadays people move from one place to another
easily, so to migrate from one place to another is a normal way of life; but it
was not so a while ago, in fact if we go back a hundred years or so, most
people used to live in their own native town all their lives, and a few of them
never even saw another town even when they were close bye, then life was very
different and people accepted that they would die in the same town that they
were born. Today life is different and we find it easier to move from one town
to another and even from one country to another and this is what I have done in
my life time, I moved from Italy to Australia.
As I have already mentioned above, there
are times in our lives when we have to say goodbye to the dearest things in our
lives; and I can tell you that it is not an easy thing to do, but the events
that happen at those times help you to make up your own mind, everyone of us
has got to decide what to do during our lives, whether one would like to stay
put in the native town that one is born, or move somewhere else in the hope of
living a better life.
I would like to sum what I am saying thus,
when people move from one country to another it has become necessary for them
to do something about it, because where they are and what they are doing has no
future in it, and in extreme cases may even be dangerous to stay; of course
this was not so in my case, because I was only looking for a better future, as
what I was doing seemed to go down as the time went by, so I decided to leave
my native country.
Here-under is an account of my leaving my
country of Italy; in order to explain that and keep my life story somehow in a
chronological way, I am going to write a bit more about my last time working in
the farm, and then when I had to leave the farm, first to go in the army to
serve my country and then leaving Italy altogether to come to Australia, and
also my voyage in a ship called the Sydney that in those times was taking
passengers to Australia, I will be telling you what impression Australia made
on me when I arrived. Of course I am going to be brief about all this, as there
is a lot to tell if I try to tell you everything in details. So, now let me
explain my position why I left.
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Explaining my position
Explaining my position and the reasons of my migration
In order to understand fully the reasons of my leaving Genzano my native
town and not wanting to return to work in the farm is this: there were many
issues and most of all was that it was very hard to earn a living in the farms,
even when we had average harvests; and then, the ways of working in the farms
was changing and there was less need of man hours work as the tractor and other
machines were coming in, so either we had to buy these machines or we had to
move out of farming, for us to buy those machines was out of reach, as our farm
was not big enough; and last and most important of all was that the very last
year that I worked in the farm we had a very poor harvest, in fact we made so
little wheat that it could not cover the cost of buying the seeds we had sown.
All these facts put together made me see that I would be wasting my time
to work in the farms as my forbears had done for hundreds of years before me,
so, I took the opportunity to migrate to Australia, as my elder brother had
done before me.
But before I could migrate to Australia I was called to serve in the army,
you see in Italy all able males over 21 should serve in the army, so, I went to
serve in the army as prescribed by the Italian laws. I served in the army and
when the army let me go I migrated to Australia.
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Leaving
for Australia
Leaving for Australia and goodbye Italy
I remember that my mother with a friend came with me to Naples to
farewell me when I left Italy. I suppose it was very hard for my mother to let
me go away from the family farm, but it had to be done, because we has debits
we owed too much money, so we the young and strong members of the family had to
find a way how to pay our debits, in order to find a way how to pay your debits
sometimes you had to borrow more money, as it was in my case, because I had to
pay my fare myself and that was a lot of money. Anyhow, as I have said before
one of the options was to migrate make enough money to pay our debits and then
return home to live a better life. Well at least that was as my mother would
have liked it to be, but it did not work that way for us for many reasons.
Anyhow it was the year 1961 when I left Italy and embarked on the ship Sydney
for Australia. I have to say that when you leave a place that you know well for
a place where you have never been it seems an adventure, starting with walking
up to the ship deck for the first time and looking at all those things that you
have never seen before.
In those times voyages that long still seemed to be a bit worrying for
old folks like my mother, because the voyage from Italy to Australia would take
one month by ship and in those times really that was the only available way to
come to Australia. Anyhow we are in Naples and I am on the ship and this ship
is going to take me to Australia a far away land, I wonder how it is going to
turn out because I have never been to sea before, I also cannot swim and this
worries me a bit but not so much, because I know that most of the other
passengers cannot swim as well, so, we are all in the same boat, so to speak
and also in reality, because we are all in the same ship. Anyhow, I am on this
ship liner Called the Sydney and the ship is about to depart from Naples; the
ship makes this low strange sound a couple of times and we see that it is
slowly moving away from the sore. We all look for our relatives and friends and
wave goodbye until they become so small in the distance that we could not
recognize them.
And after that many thoughts came to our minds and we were saying within
ourselves; goodbye mother, Goodbye my friends, goodbye Italy, goodbye Genzano
my native town, who knows when I will be able to see you again; and thus the
journey begins to unfold. We left Naples in the late afternoon, and next
morning we were docked in Messina. While we were docked in Messina we were
allowed to come ashore and walk around if we wanted to, of course as I was a
young man I wanted to see as much as I could, so I walked the streets of
Messina, which seemed to me a nice clean Sicilian town. Then we went back to
the ship as we were told and we left Italy for good; Goodbye Italy, who knows
when I will see you again?
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The real journey begins
We left the port of Naples and the real journey began, we went to Messina and then to Port Said Egypt, then through Suez Channel and the Red Sea, we stopped in Aden and then through the Indian Ocean to Australia, the far away land.
The real journey outside Italy begins
Next evening we were in Port Said Egypt. Here again we were allowed to
go ashore, and here for the first time we met with real foreigners who talked a
different language, you see, until then I had perhaps a lot of the other
passengers who were also migrating to Australia had never been outside Italy.
In Port Said I saw for the first time that the people of this world are not all
the same, in fact I am going to describe to you the way as I have seen it at
that time. We came down the ship and we were walking by instinct in small
groups, or perhaps it was one of the crew that took a group to show us the way
and so save us how things were done down there. There were a few very young and
poor people that wanted to shine your shoes for a small coin, there were others
that would sell you anything, in fact they sold to a few of us a piece of well
reaped wood for a piece of chocolate, there were a few shops open that you
could buy a bargain if you knew how to bargain, because they would ask a very
high price and who knew how to bargain could reduce that price to one third of
the original price, or something like that.
On reflection today I would say that Egypt was a strange place, you see
the people that we talked to, knew a bit of Italian and they would tell us that
we were robbing them by calling us (mariul or mariooo) which in the dialect of
southern Italy could be translated as robber or thief; but while they were
telling us that we were bobbing them, they were indeed robbing us, right, left
and centre. But today I understand what they were doing they were just trying
to live their life, they were so poor that what they were doing was the only
way for them to survive, may God forgive them if they hurt us by robbing some
of us bad.
Anyhow, then we went back to the ship and next day we were navigating in
the Suez Chanel, the Suez Channel offer one of the most strange sights,
because, while you are in a ship in this man made channel that mankind should
be proud to have made, and while you are in this strip of water slowly
navigating towards the Red See, on both sides is desert land, what a sight this
is?
After navigating the Suez Channel we went through the Red See and next
stop was the port of Aden Yemen. By now I and the others were aware that here
too things would be different from the normal way, but anyhow there was not
much to see or report. Because I did not venture too far away from the port,
what I can remember of Aden is that there were a few shops near the port, but
what I remember most is that the air seemed to have a strange smell like
sulphur that day, so even today I wonder why it was so, and also, does the air
in Aden smell like that all the time? If that is so, then different lands have
different smells. I wonder if somebody else has had the same experience as I
have.
Then the time came when we left Aden to go straight to Australia, this
time it would take about a fortnight navigating no stop the Indian Ocean, a
fortnight in the middle of the sea with no land in sight, this was going to be
another hard take for the people that had never been to sea like myself, but
anyhow we had taken that decision to go to Australia, so let us go and see what
Australia would be like.
When we left Aden I had already set foot on three continents during my
life, so, within my heart I was saying goodbye to them all, starting from my
native town of Genzano di Lucania, Goodbye Genzano my native town, goodbye
Italy my country of origin, goodbye Port Said Egypt Africa, with your poor
people that try to rob all passenger that set foot on their land just to
survive, and goodbye Aden Yemen Asia with you strange air smelling of sulphur.
Next stop will be Australia that very far away land, which we all think it, is
like the Promised Land.
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Navigating the Indian Ocean
Navigating the Indian Ocean from Aden to Fremantle Australia took us a
fortnight; I should say that it was all right considering the circumstances
that most of us had never been at sea before. You see, in those days’ people
travelled by ship or any other kind of transport only when it was necessary,
and even though the ship was not a luxury cruiser like the cruisers of today it
was good enough for us who were just passengers who wanted to move from Italy
to Australia, as it was in my case. The ship had embarked over 2000 passengers
and we all had a proper bed to sleep in, there was plenty of good wholesome
food and meals that were served regularly, we all had a place to sit at the
tables, which were attached to the floor, but if the ship moved too much we had
to mind the dishes and the drinks. Anyhow at other times we would go around the
ship with some of these acquaintances that we have met on the ship, or just sit
in our own cabin. We had also an English class that we could attend, so that we
could learn a few words of English and be able to say at least the most basic
English words, in the hope that we would be able to say something and make
other people understand what we needed when we reached Australia. There was
something else that we learned at these English classes and it was the convict
song I believe and it went thus: Ho my darling, ho my darling, ho my darling
Clementine, you are lost and gone forever, ho my darling Clementine. How
appropriate it was in our cases.
Perhaps I am saying too much about my personal story and it is becoming
boring, so I am cutting it short and close this hub. See you in my next hub,
Hello Australia here I come.
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