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https://sites.google.com/site/menfrancoreconciliation/, www.catholic.org/,www.catholic.org.au/, www.catholic.org/bible/, www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html,
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This blog can be found at this link, Goodbye to my country.
Welcome to our article, Goodbye to my country
Dear readers, in this blog, I am going back to when I left Italy to emigrate to Australia; in those times in Italy things were different from today, so, I had to say, ‘Goodbye to my country’ and go somewhere else to earn a living. Today they are better off in Italy, even if they have some problem to solve. Anyhow , let us begin to tell you my life story, and while I am doing that, I will compare a few things that have changed.
Anyhow, during our life we must make
decisions, because of what is happening around us, one of these decisions I had
to make when I was young and decided to migrate to Australia. Here we need to
say that to migrate from one country to another was a very serious decision,
so, one had to make sure that one really needed to move from where you were.
This was not easy to do, because the generations before us stayed all their
life in the towns were they were born, only a few ventured to migrate, because
moving from one country to another was dangerous and also took a very long
time, so, for me and for all those that wanted to migrate was not an easy
decision to make, but in the end everyone has to make his own decisions, so,
after thinking it over, I decided to migrate to Australia, since my brother was
already in Australia and he said that it was good. So, I said goodbye to my country
and migrated to Australia.
Today to understand the reasons why I migrated to Australia in the sixties, you need at least read this article that I have written in Hub Pages, Farming today compared to the old way, where you can compare the ways of living.
Anyhow, today the same decision is easier to
make, because people move from one country to another easily; 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
from one country to another and this is what I have done in my lifetime, I
moved from Italy to Australia.
Here I want to explain my position, there are times in our lives when we have to say goodbye to the dearest things in our lives and move to another country. When people move to another country it has become necessary for them to do so, to find a better life in the future. For this reason, I decided to leave my family farm in Italy to migrate to Australia.
Now, to explain why, I am writing about my last year 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 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. I am going to be brief about all this. So, now let me explain my position why I left Italy.
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Explaining my position
Let me explain, to
understand the reasons of leaving Genzano di Lucania 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, because 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 the 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 was 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.
But before I could
migrate to Australia I was called to serve in the army, you see in Italy all
able males over 21 must 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 Italy for Australia.
Goodbye Italy, I am
leaving for Australia.
I remember that my mother with a friend came with me to Naples to farewell me when I left Italy. I suppose it was hard for my mother to let me go away from the family farm, but it had to be done, because we had 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. Anyhow, 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 wanted 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 took a long time, like going to Australia would worry people, so,
old folks like my mother was worried, because the voyage from Italy to
Australia would take one month by ship and in those times it was the only way
available to go to Australia.
Anyhow, we are in
Naples with my mother and her friend, who had a couple of sons in Australia
already, we went on the ship and after visiting the ship, my mother and her
fried went back on the dock, they stayed on the dock waiting to say goodbye.
Anyhow, I embarked on the ship and this ship is going to take me to Australia a
faraway 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 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.
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 and 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 it was one of the ship crew
that took a group to show us the way, and to see 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 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 can 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 center. 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.
The Suez Chanel is a man made channel between the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. It also divides the continent of Africa to the continent of Asia.
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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 Sea and next stop was the port of
Aden Yemen. By now I and the others were aware that here 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 is 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 would be 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 traveled 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 passengers who wanted to move from Italy to Australia. 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, 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 could 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: Oh my darling, oh my
darling, oh my darling Clementine, you are lost and gone forever, oh my darling
Clementine. How appropriate it was in our cases.
Dear readers, in this blog I have not been able to upload the picture of the original article, if you want to see the photos to see more click on this link, Goodbye to my country.
I SAID GOODBYE TO ITALY AND MIGRATED TO AUSTRALIA.
See you in our next article, going to Australia.
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