Francesco Cantarella

Story

My grandfather, Francesco (‘Cicio’) was the son of successful wholesalers in a village called Soleto Sorbo, outside Catania, in Sicily. He was a goodhearted and extraordinarily goodlooking young man who wanted to make his own way in the world rather than rely on his father’s hard work and money. He joined the Italian Navy and earned himself a term in the brig for ‘dereliction of duty’ due to his imperturbability and his penchant for sleeping in almost any situation. When guarding prisoners Cicio felt it was just as practical to lie over the trapdoor and snooze as it was to stand there stupidly doing nothing. His superior officer didn’t see it that way however. Cicio was fortunately freed when Prince Alberto Savoia visited his ship and subsequently granted amnesty to all its prisoners. After his discharge from the forces, Cicio worked for a short time for his father then decided to travel to Australia to find his own fortune.

Arriving in 1925, Cicio found there was no work and he was homeless for over a year. He made a tent out of fertilizer bags and relied on the kindness of friends and strangers to keep body and soul together. His good looks came in handy at this time, and he often charmed the waitresses in cafes and restaurants who turned a blind-eye when he snuck out without paying. Eventually, he managed to charm his way onto a cane-gang as a cook, which has always been a source of puzzlement to his descendants as we know that he couldn’t even boil an egg. We suspect one of his many girlfriends was doing the cooking for him. Well he turned out to be a gun cutter and he continued in this backbreaking work for eight years, saving enough to buy a boarding house. The boarding house did well and soon Cicio had enough to buy his first farm in Mosman. He married the beautiful Maria Fazio by proxy in 1936 while she was still living in Giarre. Maria was a smart, practical and strongwilled firebrand, a city girl who as a child would hide under the bed to avoid kissing the hand of her family’s greasy landlord. Cicio and Maria first met on the Sydney docks over three months after they married. It was love at first sight, and they remained devoted to each other for the rest of Cicio’s short life. They had a son, Angelo, and a daughter, Venera.

In 1946, after a legal dispute with his business partners in which the court took his side in the matter, Cicio sold the farm in Mosman and bought a farm in Edmonton, just south of Cairns, which his son Angelo still farms today. In 1956 Cicio died of bone cancer in St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney. Maria was bereft and inconsolable, she wore black for a decade. Angelo was 18 at the time, and the heavy burden of a debt-laden farm fell on his young shoulders. Venera was just 11 years old.

Cicio never had an opportunity to return to Sicily, and he never saw his loving parents again. Maria returned for a few months in 1969. She died aged 70 in 1985, the grand matriarch of a huge family.

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