Monday, October 3, 2016

Goodbye to my country

WELCOME TO FRANK MENCHISE BLOG OF GENZANO DI LUCANIA, YOU ARE INVITED TO BROWSE AS LONG AS YOU LIKE.
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Welcome to our blog, Genzano it story
and this post, Goodbye to my country
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GOODBYE TO MY COUNTRY
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Today we could say that in the world most thing change, as the time goes by, sometimes thing change for the better and sometimes they become worse. When I was young I left Italy because we were poor and wanted a better life. There were a lot of people just like me that left Italy in those times. today is seems that things are better off, So, instead of people leaving Italy, there are people going to Italy. One can only say that in the last fifty years there have been great changes.  

GOODBYE TO MY COUNTRY

Dear readers, in our last post, we were talking about the Italian problem of today, I was talking about that because I have come from Italy, so, I still feel that I am an Italian and see their problem as if they are my problem also. Anyhow, today I would like to tell you my life story starting from when I left Italy and came to Australia. So, I am starting with, ‘Goodbye to my country’ as this title suggests. And then, we are going to write here a group of articles dealing with my life in Australia and what I did, in the hope that some of you might find them helpful to know, especially those articles about housing and building work, and how to own a house, etc. Starting from the time when I left Italy and most of the things I experienced in Australia.
We all know that in our life time we have to make many decisions according to what is happening around us, one of these decisions I had to make when I decided to migrate to Australia; we need to say that in those times to migrate from one country to another was a very serious decision, because the generations before us usually stayed all their life in the towns were they were born, only a few ventured to migrate, because moving from one country to another was thought to be dangerous and also took a very long time, so for me and for all those that wanted to migrate was not an easy decision to make, but in the end everyone has to make his own decisions, so, after thinking it over, I decided to migrate to Australia, since my brother was already in Australia and he said that it was good. So, I said goodbye to my Italian motherland and migrated to Australia.
Today to understand the reasons why I migrated to Australia in the sixties, one has to read those articles I have already written in hub pages, or at least one of our earlier articles called, Wheat farming the modern way, where you could compare how hard it was in those days to earn a living in the farms, when one compare that to the modern ways of farming especially here in Australia; this is the link, Farming today compared to the old way
Anyhow, today the same decision would have been easier to make, because nowadays people move from one country to another easily, so to migrate from one place to another is a normal way of life; but it was not so a while ago, in fact if we go back a hundred years or so, most people used to live in their own native town all their lives, and a few of them never even saw another town even when they were close bye, then life was very different and people accepted that they would die in the same town that they were born. Today life is different and we find it easier to move from one town to another and even from one country to another and this is what I have done in my life time, I moved from Italy to Australia.
As we have already mentioned above, there are times in our lives when we have to say goodbye to the dearest things in our lives; and I can tell you that it is not an easy thing to do; but the events that happen at those times help you to make up your own mind, every one of us has got to decide what to do during our lives, whether one would like to stay put in the native town that one is born, or move somewhere else in the hope of living a better life.
I would like to sum what I am saying thus, when people move from one country to another it has become necessary for them to do something about it, because where they are and what they are doing has no future in it, and in extreme cases may even be dangerous to stay; of course I wasn’t in danger, so, this was my case, because I was only looking for a better future, as what I was doing seemed to go down as the time went by, so I decided to leave my small family farm in my native country of Italy to migrate to Australia.
Here-under is an account of my leaving my country of Italy; in order to explain that and keep my life story somehow in a chronological way, I am going to write a bit more about my last time working in the farm, and then when I had to leave the farm, first to go in the army to serve my country and then leaving Italy altogether to come to Australia, and also my voyage in a ship called the Sydney that in those times was taking passengers to Australia, I will be telling you what impression Australia made on me when I arrived. Of course I am going to be brief about all this, as there is a lot to tell if I try to tell you everything in details. So, now let me explain my position why I left.
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Explaining my position
Explaining my position and the reasons of my migration
In order to understand fully the reasons of my leaving Genzano di Lucania my native town and not wanting to return to work in the farm is this: there were many issues and most of all was that it was very hard to earn a living in the farms, even when we had average harvests; and then, the ways of working in the farms was changing and there was less need of man hours work as the tractor and other machines were coming in, so either we had to buy these machines or we had to move out of farming, for us to buy those machines was out of reach, as our farm was not big enough; and last and most important of all was that the very last year that I worked in the farm we had a very poor harvest, in fact we made so little wheat that it could not cover the cost of buying the seeds we had sown.
All these facts put together made me see that I would be wasting my time to work in the farms as my forbears had done for hundreds of years before me, so, I took the opportunity to migrate to Australia, as my elder brother had done before me.
But before I could migrate to Australia I was called to serve in the army, you see in Italy all able males over 21 should serve in the army, so, I went to serve in the army as prescribed by the Italian laws. I served in the army and when the army let me go I migrated to Australia.
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 Leaving for Australia

Leaving for Australia and goodbye Italy
I remember that my mother with a friend came with me to Naples to farewell me when I left Italy. I suppose it was very hard for my mother to let me go away from the family farm, but it had to be done, because we have debits we owed too much money, so we the young and strong members of the family had to find a way how to pay our debits, in order to find a way how to pay your debits sometimes you had to borrow more money, as it was in my case, because I had to pay my fare myself and that was a lot of money. Anyhow, as I have said before one of the options was to migrate make enough money to pay our debits and then return home to live a better life. Well at least that was as my mother would have liked it to be, but it did not work that way for us for many reasons. Anyhow it was the year 1961 when I left Italy and embarked on the ship Sydney for Australia. I have to say that when you leave a place that you know well for a place where you have never been it seems an adventure, starting with walking up to the ship deck for the first time and looking at all those things that you have never seen before.
In those times voyages that took a long like going to Australia would worry people, so, old folks like my mother was worried, because the voyage from Italy to Australia would take one month by ship and in those times really that was the only way available to come to Australia.
Anyhow we are in Naples with my mother and her friend and after visiting the ship, my mother and her fried stay on the dock waiting to say goodbye, while I embarked on the ship and this ship is going to take me to Australia a faraway land, I wonder how it is going to turn out because I have never been to sea before, I also cannot swim and this worries me a bit but not so much, because I know that most of the other passengers cannot swim as well, so, we are all in the same boat, so to speak and also in reality, because we are all in the same ship. Anyhow, I am on this ship liner Called the Sydney and the ship is about to depart from Naples; the ship makes this low strange sound a couple of times and we see that it is slowly moving away from the sore. We all look for our relatives and friends and wave goodbye until they become so small in the distance that we could not recognize them.
And after that many thoughts came to our minds and we were saying within ourselves; goodbye mother, goodbye my friends, goodbye Italy, goodbye Genzano my native town, who knows when I will be able to see you again; and thus the journey begins to unfold. We left Naples in the late afternoon, and next morning we were docked in Messina. While we were docked in Messina we were allowed to come ashore and walk around if we wanted to, of course as I was a young man I wanted to see as much as I could, so I walked the streets of Messina, which seemed to me a nice clean Sicilian town. Then we went back to the ship as we were told and we left Italy for good; Goodbye Italy, who knows when I will see you again?
I believe that I have said enough in this post, so see you in our next post, the real journey begins.