Carmela Piscioneri (Married name Manno)

Story

Carmela Piscioneri

(Married name Carmela Manno)

The only daughter of Pietro Piscioneri and Rosa Cavallaro, Carmela was born in the Calabrian Mountains on 7 July 1906. Like many other women from her village of San Nicola di Caulonia she was to experience many separations from loved ones, fuelled by the desire to escape poverty and obtain financial security.

Her brother Ilario left for America when she was young. She never saw him again. Her other brother Vincenzo also left for America after he married.

Carmela spent most of her youth helping to tend the small plot of land on which the family grew vegetables, harvesting the reeds which she turned into linen and wove to cloth for her glory box and learning to make the traditional foods of her village. At the age of 18 in 1924 she married Vincenzo Manno. Children followed quickly: a son Pietro in 1925 and a daughter Rosa in 1927.

With Rosa 5 months old Vincenzo left for a new life in Australia. What Carmela and Vincenzo hoped would be a short separation spaned into years with the depression making it difficult for Vincenzo to save money for his family\’s passage. Carmela, helped by her mother, raised and cared for her children. She lived on what she could grow and the money that arrived from Vincenzo.

Finally with tears of joy and sadness she boarded the Viminale with her children and sailed for Australia to join her husband, leaving behind a mother she would never see again.

Carmela, Pietro and Rosa were greeted by an overjoyed Vincenzo in May 1936. Carmela was excited but the children shy. They didn\’t know their father. Vincenzo proudly took then to Redlynch in Queensland were he had made a home on the 70 acres of land he co-owned with two friends. The land produced vegetables and had been bought from money he had made cane cutting. The house was a tin shack with a dirt floor and furniture made from old boxes and wheat bags. What was important for Carmela was that her family was together again.

Pietro and Rosa went to school and started to adapt to the new land and language. Carmela with the encouragement of her husband and children also learned the language. She studied newspapers and her children quickly learned they could hide little from her by speaking English.

A daughter Mary was born in 1937. Whilst she was breast feeding Mary one night Vincenzo found a large carpet snake under their bed. It had smelt the milk. It never called again. (Mary was later to get polio and give her parents many anxious moments. She became one of the first Australian children to be treated in an iron lung.)

Happy in their adopted land Carmela and Vincenzo applied for naturalisation. The application was set aside when war broke out and instead they were issued with Enemy Alien numbers. Carmela was Q12911.

The war brought new family separation. Vincenzo was interned in 1942 leaving Carmela alone caring for the children. She felt isolated and afraid. In public places she and her children were required to walk in single file and not speak a language other than English.

The government gave 9 shillings a week to compensate for the loss of a breadwinner. It was barely enough. Her oldest children became resourceful. Peter found work wherever he could and Rosa learned how to work the horse and grow vegetables for their table and sale. Carmela felt for woman left alone by internment. She helped where she could and provided a temporary home for a friend.

In late 1943 Carmela needed a goitre operation. Her husband sought and was given release from his restriction order to be by her side.

The war ended and Carmela and her family gained their much wanted Australian naturalisation. They sold the farm and bought land in Redlynch. Rosa married and within two years she and her husband began a life as dried fruit growers near Mildura. Rosa encouraged her parents to move south.

In 1949 Carmela found herself working beside her husband and son on a dried fruit property. The country was strange, dry and flat – a far cry from the mountains of Calabria or the rich green of Queensland.

Vincenzo and Carmela passed their farm on to their son Pietro when he married. They then bought and farmed another property in Irymple before retiring to a house in Mildura. Carmela\’s health started to wane. She had a hernia that would not heal. Following a third operation in 1968 she developed a blood clot and died unexpectedly.

She left a grieving husband, children and grandchildren. She also left a wealth of traditions covering food preparation and craft, which are still practised in the family.

Jenny (Dichiera) McKenry

Granddaughter

February 2009

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