Donato and Giuseppina Vitullo

Story

Donato and Giuseppina lived in a small farming village in Italy called Bomba. They led a harsh life, surviving on food they produced on their farms. Don remembers that his family were so poor that sometimes they had to boil wild grass for food.

World War II left Italy devastated and young men like Don had very little chance of getting work. When a recruitment officer for the Australian Immigration Office came to the village promising jobs, all of the young men, including Don, gathered in the village square and left for Australia. Pina was only 13 years old at the time.

Six years later Pina and the other girls in Bomba realised they had a problem: There were no boys in town to marry anymore. Her parents forbade her to travel to Australia unless she was married. The solution was to marry Don by proxy. In 1958 Don and Pina, despite being several thousand kilometres apart, were married in Bomba’s town church. Days later 19-year-old Pina left on a plane for the four day trip to a new country and a new husband.

When Don arrived in Australia in 1952 he and his friends were sent to Bonegilla, an ex-prisoner of war camp in Victoria. There they had to wait until they were ‘selected\’ for work. Farmers inspected them like cattle – feeling their muscles and looking at their teeth. The strong ones went to work on farms, while Don was sent to Newcastle to work at the BHP steel works. He stayed there for the next 40 years.

The first two things Pina can remember about Australia were lipstick and suntans. In Bomba lipstick was scarce and a suntan revealed you to be a peasant. In Australia, however, a suntan was fashionable.

Once she and Don had established themselves in Newcastle, Pina realised she had to make several adjustments to life, including trying to make Italian food from Australian ingredients; coping with the industrial smog; and surviving the summer heat. The most difficult, however, was the language. The first English Pina learned was: “I don’t understand”. She also learned not to move her hands while she talked, so as not to attract attention.

Pina did not begin to learn English until the first of her four daughters started school. English is now the primary language spoken within her immediate family.

Raising four girls would present problems to parents in any society. The Vitullos had the task of integrating their Italian family and cultural beliefs with the Australian society that their children would grow up in. Unlike some Italian families, Don and Pina allowed all of their daughters to marry Anglo-Saxon Australians. To them it didn’t matter their sons-in-law weren’t Italian, as long as they were ‘nice boys\’.

When Don and Pina first arrived in Australia in the 1950’s, only one small shop in the whole of Newcastle sold pasta. Fifty years, four children and many grandchildren later, the Vitullos have adapted to the Australian way of life. With millions of other migrants they have helped to create a new Australia – one that contains hundreds of supermarkets devoting entire shelves to pasta. Pina and Don and others like them have adjusted to their new country and in the process adjusted their new country to themselves.

This is a successful Australian story with no ending.

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