Olga Paccagnella

Story

My family come from the small Italian village of Via Guazzi, near Abano Terme. Olga’s husband, Vittorio was captured in WWII in North Africa by the Australians. As a POW he was sent to India, where conditions in the camp were so bad that he wouldn’t talk about them. The only story my father ever heard him tell was that the Italian regimental doctor operated on himself to remove his own appendix because of the lack of medical facilities.

Vittorio was then shipped to the Northam army camp in Western Australia, which was being used to house Italian prisoners. Only a few months after arriving he was placed with an Australian farmer, Jack Phillips, to work on Jack’s farm.

Italian prisoners were quickly dispatched out to farms because they were regarded as low to no risk. Jack would often give Vittorio a rifle to go and shoot rabbits for dinner. Vittorio loved the freedom, the land, and the way the Phillips’ family took him in. Jack sponsored Vittorio after the war was over, and once he’d saved enough money, he sent for his wife, Olga and his young son Nino, my father.

Olga and Nino sailed the long trip to Australia on the Ugolino Vivaldi and arrived early in 1950. On the ship they stayed in the steerage in dormitories of women, where Olga suffered seasickness for the almost the entire trip. She recalled that the food was edible but there was little of it as it was so soon after the war. She also recalled the unbearable heat as they passed through the tropics in the Suez Canal. She made some friends on the ship, but those women all went to Victoria and Olga never saw any of them again.

Coming from Northern Italy to the Wheatbelt was a shock that Olga repeatedly said nearly killed her. To come to the unimaginable heat of the WA Wheatbelt, living in a tin shed, not comprehending the language, the customs, the food, or the racism, was almost too much for her. It hardened her, this desperate clinging to life, of making sure that, against the odds, her children would flourish.

My Nonna always frightened me. She didn\’t talk much of these hardships: her grief, her fear, her incredible homesickness, that working in an asbestos mine killed her husband and left her alone and angry in a country that never really accepted her. But it was there, palpable in everything she did. Mostly, she just fed us. Food was her voice. The language of food is universal and no-one spoke the language of food quite like her.

Olga and Nino had arrived in the heat of summer. They moved in with Vittorio, into the shed, with its corrugated tin walls and lack of space. My father\’s bed was the bathtub. Nonna said living in that shed was like she was breathing in fire. There was no oil, no pasta, no tomato paste, nothing that she knew. I remember her telling me that it was the oil she missed the most, that cooking with dripping made her skin crawl. She got so thin that Victorio would yell at her for not eating, and as a small boy my father would wonder if she was dying.

‘They ate mutton that tasted like rubber boots and vegetables cooked in water. Just water! No salad, no oil. And lamingtons! You know lamingtons, la nipote? Made out of stale cake. Stale! Capisci?’ she would say to me on one of those rare occasions she\’d talk about her life back then.

Slowly she learnt the language. She made friends in the Wheatbelt town of Northam, where they ended up settling. And because of the sheer amount of Italian POWs and their families there, eventually they had Italian ingredients to cook with.

Olga lived in Northam her entire life. She died there in 5 March 2007. She was an incredible mix of fierce determination and brooding sorrow. Hers is not a migrant story of unparalleled success. It is for her descendents, for her children, my father and aunt, Nino and Gardie, and for her Grandchildren, Michelle, me (Simonne), Brendan and Raylene, for we are proud Australians. This is as home to us as the arms of our parents and the smell of Nonna\’s cooking. We are successful, happy, and free. But Olga came to the Wheatbelt for the love of her life, and when he died, she stayedÉ out of fear, love, we\’ll never know, she could never tell us. She didn\’t often share her stories, but she told us often what a hard life she\’d had. It wasn\’t so much that Australia didn\’t eventually welcome her after the awful racism of the 50s and 60s began to fade, it was more than that. By then she was already hardened, tired, and prepared to give up her own happiness for that of her children and her children\’s children. How do you repay such a thing? How do you carry such a legacy? I don\’t know. We do the best we can. We love you Nonna.

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