J. Peter Garoni (Garrone)

Story

Pietro Garrone was born in Italy in 1890, spending his early years in Rivalta Bormida. In 1897 he migrated to Australia with his mother Maria, two sisters and a younger brother to join his father Antonio. Antonio had left two years before to try his luck on the gold-fields around Chiltern, Vic. but found that a more secure future for his family would be had in establishing a carting business for the miners’ supplies. Maria was left to make the long voyage alone on a huge ship trying to care for four children.

Settled in Chiltern Antonio encouraged his family to embrace everything Australian and Pietro was soon called Peter at school in Chiltern. When naturalized the family name somehow became Garoni and although his official name was John Peter he was always referred to as Peter Garoni. He left school at 14 to drive 4-horse wagons for his father and when the family settled on a property in Dandongadale his ability to handle any task with ease saw him in demand for many types of job, most of them in the bush.

In 1916 he married Adelaide Langshaw, a local girl from Buffalo River where they made their home. This wonderful partnership lasted into their 60th year of marriage. Peter continued his work in timber-felling etc, sometimes spending weeks on end in the bush, living in a canvas tent where his best friends were his dog, a billy-can and a camp oven.

Peter and Adelaide had nine children who, while they were poor in the monetary sense, never lacked good food, colthing or a warm placer to live. They all chipped in with growing vegetables, milking cows, making butter, rearing chickens etc. Even in his later years Peter’s vegetable garden was the yard-stick for the valley. Sharing and swapping goods with other families was just a way of life and if a neighbour’s bull crossed the river to visit a willing cow – all the better. It meant a free calf next Spring! Nothing was wasted as fruit and vegetables were preserved, jam was made, meat salted and stored, clothing redesigned and handed down etc.

Family dramas were many, for example they lost 2 y.o. Cathie to diphtheria; Adelaide and two of the boys almost drowned when the horse and gig were swept off a bridge in a flood; when Denis developed peritonitis Peter, with no time to catch the horse, rode 4 miles into Myrtleford on a bike to fetch the doctor ; following a brain haemorrhage, Peter was sent to hospital in faraway Melbourne etc. etc., but through these trials and countless more, the family simply became more close-knit.

When a broken leg meant that Peter had to give up work in the bush, he took the job of driver for the Co-Op. Store in Myrtleford. He delivered goods within a 50 mile radius of the town in an old Bedford truck carrying anything from eggs and sugar to cartwheels and chaff. He was, of course, a welcome sight to those on his route, bringing news as well as goods.

One sad part of Peter’s life was during World War 11 when, despite having three sons and two sons-in-law in the Services (all volunteers), he was still expected to report to the Myrtleford police station each week because he was born in Italy. However, in his inimitable way, he explained to his younger children that the government was just looking after their country.

Peter truly loved Australia and being Australian, and never lost his awe of the wide open spaces he found here. He taught his children and grandchildren to look at and see the wonders of the bush, the fertility of the soil when cared for properly, and was very ecologically aware long before the term ‘greenie’ was ever coined.

His beloved Adelaide died in January 1976 and, brokenhearted, he joined her in July of the same year. Their 27 grandchildren still revere what this couple achieved and Peter’s innate Italian sense of family continues through them and their own children.

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