Teresa Reginato (nee Cremasco)
| Town/City | Griffith |
|---|---|
| First name | Teresa |
| Last name | Reginato (nee Cremasco) |
| Country of Origin | Italy |
| Date of Birth | 16/01/39 |
| Year of Arrival in Australia | 1959 |
| Submitted by | Eddie Reginato |
Story
Teresa\’s village on Northern Italy, One Di Fonte, in the province of Treviso was home for her mother, father, five brothers and six sisters. It was a large family, of which she was the eldest child.
Being the eldest, she had to be more of a help to her parents than the other siblings. From an early age she became the surrogate child carer as her mother and father worked their tenanted corn crops and dairy cows. It was a childhood filled with simple joys although it was not uncommon to have days when you were hungry and cold.
Through all this post war hardship, by the time Teresa was sixteen, she had developed into a beautiful dark haired young woman who had taken the fancy of a young man named Tony, from the nearby village of Paderno del Grappa. At twenty years of age, Tony immigrated to Australia with a promise to his sweet heart that he would make a home for them both in this far off strange country.
Sure enough, 4 years later in 1959, Teresa embarked on a cruise liner that took her across the oceans to Australia. Tony greeted her at the docks and they spent her first night in Australia, in separate rooms at the People\’s Palace in Sydney. The following day they took the long drive 600 kilometres west to Griffith NSW.
One can imagine the first impressions made by this young Italian woman who had come from a village surrounded by alpine terrain and snowy winters, to find herself in the flat plains of Griffith. What did the future hold for her in this hot dry land, the air filled with flies and red desert dust?
A couple of days after arriving, Teresa was married to Tony. Their first home was a two-roomed fibro cottage located on a farm near the township. For both of them the one thing that this new land had that wasn\’t available in the villages back home was work.
While her husband worked as a barman at the Yoogali Club, Teresa did piece work as a seamstress, packed oranges for the Sydney markets, worked in a dried prunes packing shed, worked on the bottling line of a local winery and in an orange juice factory.
Over the years Teresa and Tony brought into the world two sons and a daughter.
Today Teresa is a grandmother and proud to be an Australian with an Italian heritage. Teresa is a member of the local chapter of the Trevisani Association, and a passionate competitor on the Yoogali Catholic Club bocce team. Teresa is still (occasionally) working in the packing sheds as well, fifty years after stepping off that boat from Italy.