Wednesday, December 7, 2016

On the way to Australia

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, On the way to Australia
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-Australia












On the way to Australia


Happenings on the way to Australia

Dear readers, this post is the continuation of our last post, going to Australia, so, let us continue from where we left our story.

During the fortnight that the ship took to cross the Indian Ocean, every one of us was wondering his own way about the future in Australia and what we knew about Australia; in my own case at some stage of this crossing I would start wondering how hard it would be to live in the driest continent on earth, as I had learned at school that Australia is very dry compared to other continents or countries. So, what would the supply of water be like, and what about the westerly wind be like, I remember that my teacher had said that these winds last up to three months, so, I was asking myself, is it going to be just as bad and as cold as winter times winds of Italy, who knows? You see to cross this stretch of water of the Indian Ocean was taking too long and therefore it was becoming even boring to go out on deck just to see the sea water and the sky above. So no wonder we were thinking so many strange things.

There is something else that I found out on the Indian Ocean, which was not good news for me; but let us start this story from the beginning. You see, in those times when you went overseas from these small towns like Genzano, anyone that had relatives would like to send a present or something to their relatives, or at least their greetings or something like that, and also if you went to a relative house to stay when you arrived in Australia, you could not and would not go there without bringing some presents, from your family and their families, so you can imagine how loaded you were with your own presents and friends presents when you boarded the ship, and I tell you I was loaded too with all this stuff.

Now forgive me my readers if I all of a sudden I start talking or thinking, or comparing if you like about today TV shows like border security, instead of talking about my journey to Australia, but you see, I was coming from a country town and most presents were not bought at the shop, they could be food or something that could not be allowed to go through customs in Australia, so every time I see something on TV like border protection show, I cannot help thinking that I have been in the same position myself, when I first came to Australia, but anyhow on the ship I had plenty of time to work it out, as I was talking to some people that had been in Australia before, so I was able to avoid the worse.

Among other things on the ship I had two demijohns of local wine, which I was sure that would be very much appreciated from the people that I was going to stay with in Australia, for people that don’t know what a demijohn is I will explain, A demijohn is a large round glass container dressed with something like woven straw, in my case I had two of them one was ten litres, and the other seven litres, in addition to that and strange as it may seem I had some (lampagioni) small wild onions, which I slowly realised could never go past customs, so when I was sure that they would not be allowed to enter Australia, I dumped them in the Indian Ocean. I had also some local homemade large beautiful biscuits and other stuff. Anyhow let me talk about the two demijohn of local wine now, because for a long time anyone that were sailing with me on this ship would remind me of this event; these two demijohns were in my cabin and there wasn’t any way to restrain them properly, so, when the sea was rough they were sliding across the cabin floor until one of them broke that is why my passenger friend always remember and remind me about the good lost wine.

These are some of the happenings during my journey to Australia. Anyhow after a fortnight we reached the continent of Australia and docked at Fremantle in Western Australia. Hurray, we have made it to Australia, now we are going to see what Australia is like and if it would bring us good fortune.

But we are going to do that in our next post, as people today don’t like tong articles. So, see you soon in our next post called, first positive impressions.

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Genzano it story
On the way to Australia
IS GOING TO BE CONTINUED;
Next time with, first positive impressions
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Saturday, December 3, 2016

Going to Australia

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 this blog, Genzano it story
and this post, going to Australia
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This is the map of Australia, the far away land on the other side of the world that we wanted to emigrate to, in the early sixties and we did.









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Going to Australia

Dear readers, this post is the continuation of our last post, the real journey begins, this is the story of my life that I am writing here in blogger in small posts, which are going to be several articles; in this article, we are going to tell you about how I felt and what I did on the ship during my voyage when I was migrating to Australia. Then if you follow my writings you will find that I have worked in the building industry, as a bricklayer building houses and this could be interesting to some of you, if you would like to DIY some building work. Anyhow let us go back to my trip on the ship to Australia. You see, in the early sixties just about everybody that went overseas had to sail to whatever destination one had to go to.  

While I was on this ship called the Sydney, in my heart I was already saying: Hello Australia, here I come with my dreams in my heart of finding a better life for myself and perhaps for the future generation of my future family, if or when I can have a family of my own.

I know that I might be dreaming these dreams that may not happen at all the way I want, but I am young and there is no harm in dreaming to find a better life if I could.

So, as I have said in our last hub, we left Port Said to go straight to Australia and while we were on the ship crossing the Indian Ocean we the passenger that were migrating to Australia started to think already about what we had left behind in Italy, and at the same time we were eager to see what Australia was like, on the ship we made some acquaintances and everyone had some story to tell, most of us would be talking about the reasons why we were migrating to Australia and what we would like to achieve in Australia, but really we didn't know a thing about what we could do in Australia, most of us did not have any job qualification, so we were hoping to do whatever job came our way, as long as there was enough money to earn a living for a start, so we hoped for the best.

Now, this time I want to keep this post very short for my own personal reasons; so, see you in our next post, on the way to Australia.

Monday, October 31, 2016

The real journey begins

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, the real journey begins
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The real journey begins
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Ship docked in the port of Naples, where people in the sixties would usually embark to go oversea. In those times there were no real large airlines that could fly you anywhere in the world like today. So, we had to travel for a long time to reach our destination.
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After we left Italy, we crossed the Mediterranean Sea, then the Suez Channel and The Red Sea. We that had never travelled before, we were all wondering what we would see next. In a way it was very interesting, but we also were worried sometimes.
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The real journey begins

The real journey outside Italy begins

Dear readers, this post is the continuation of our previous post, Goodbye to my country, where we had gone ashore and walked the streets of Messina and then back to the ship to leave Italy for good, and we did. Next evening, we were in Port Said Egypt. Here again we were allowed to go ashore, and here for the first time we met with real foreigners who talked a different language, you see, until then I and perhaps a lot of the other passengers who were also migrating to Australia had never been outside Italy. In Port Said I saw for the first time that the people of this world are not all the same, in fact I am going to describe to you the way as I have seen it at that time. We came down the ship and we were walking by instinct in small groups, or perhaps it was one of the ship crew that took a group to show us the way, and to see how things were done down there.

There were a few very young and poor people that wanted to shine your shoes for a small coin, there were others that would sell you anything, in fact they sold to a few of us a piece of well reaped wood for a piece of chocolate, there were a few shops open that you could buy a bargain if you knew how to bargain, because they would ask a very high price and who knew how to bargain could reduce that price to one third of the original price, or something like that.

On reflection today I would say that Egypt was a strange place, you see the people that we talked to, knew a bit of Italian and they would tell us that we were robbing them by calling us (mariul or mariooo) which in the dialect of southern Italy could be translated as robber or thief; but while they were telling us that we were bobbing them, they were indeed robbing us, right, left and centre. But today I understand what they were doing, they were just trying to live their life, they were so poor that what they were doing was the only way for them to survive, may God forgive them if they hurt us by robbing some of us a bit of what we had. 

Anyhow, then we went back to the ship and next day we were navigating in the Suez Chanel, the Suez Channel offer one of the strangest sights, because, while you are in a ship in this man-made channel that mankind should be proud to have made, and while you are in this strip of water slowly navigating towards the Red See, on both sides is desert land, what a sight this is?

After navigating the Suez Channel, we went through the Red Sea and next stop was the port of Aden Yemen. By now I and the others were aware that here too things would be different from the normal way, but anyhow there was not much to see or report. Because I did not venture too far away from the port, what I can remember of Aden is that there were a few shops near the port, but what I remember most is that the air seemed to have a strange smell like sulphur that day, so even today I wonder why it was so, and also, does the air in Aden smell like that all the time? If that is so, then different lands have different smells. I wonder if somebody else has had the same experience as I have.

Then the time came when we left Aden to go straight to Australia, this time it would take about a fortnight navigating no stop the Indian Ocean, a fortnight in the middle of the sea with no land in sight, this was going to be another hard take for the people that had never been to sea like myself, but anyhow we had taken that decision to go to Australia, so let us go and see what Australia would be like.

When we left Aden I had already set foot on three continents during my life, so, within my heart I was saying goodbye to them all, starting from my native town of Genzano di Lucania, Goodbye Genzano my native town, goodbye Italy my country of origin, goodbye Port Said Egypt Africa, with your poor people that try to rob all passenger that set foot on their land just to survive, and goodbye Aden Yemen Asia with you strange air smelling of sulphur. Next stop will be Australia that very far away land, which we were all thinking it would be like the Promised Land.

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Navigating the Indian Ocean

Navigating the Indian Ocean from Aden to Fremantle Australia took us a fortnight; I should say that it was all right considering the circumstances that most of us had never been at sea before. You see, in those days’ people travelled by ship or any other kind of transport only when it was necessary, and even though the ship was not a luxury cruiser like the cruisers of today it was good enough for us who were just passengers who wanted to move from Italy to Australia, as it was in my case. The ship had embarked over 2000 passengers and we all had a proper bed to sleep in, there was plenty of good wholesome food and meals that were served regularly, we all had a place to sit at the tables, which were attached to the floor, but if the ship moved too much we had to mind the dishes and the drinks. Anyhow at other times we would go around the ship with some of these acquaintances that we have met on the ship, or just sit in our own cabin. We had also an English class that we could attend, so that we could learn a few words of English and be able to say at least the most Basic English words, in the hope that we would be able to say something and make other people understand what we needed when we reached Australia. There was something else that we learned at these English classes and it was the convict song I believe and it went thus: Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Clementine, you are lost and gone forever, oh my darling Clementine. How appropriate it was in our cases.

Perhaps I am saying too much about my personal story and it is becoming boring, so I am cutting it short and close this article. See you in our next article, hello Australia here I come, or going to Australia.

See you soon, where I am going to tell you a bit more about my life story.  

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Genzano it story
The real journey begins
IS GOING TO BE CONTINUED;
Next time with, more of my life story, or something a bit more modern, depending on what happens.
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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.

Monday, September 5, 2016

The Italian problem of today

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, The Italian problem of today
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The Italian problem of today
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This map of Italy, shows you how close is Italy. to the coast of Africa. So, it is easy for the illegal emigrant to try to come to Italy by boat. This is creating a real problem, because there are too many emigrant, as we all know from the news. In fact during last week there were 15 thousands new arrival. When will this stop one may ask? And will Italy be able to cope with all these illegal emigrants?
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Italy position and population

The Italian problem of today, exists because Italy is a peninsula in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, so, it is easy for the refugees to come to Europe going through Italy. We believe that this is the main reason why so many refugees or illegal emigrants arrive in Italy every day, and sometime even thousands of them can come in just one day, other times just a few, but it is a problem that might never end, unless we of the western wold are able to find a solution. Therefore, we should be concerned about it, since it might bring lots of other problems. 
We have reasons to believe that Italy cannot cope with this incoming of refugees for long, so, something might happen that will show us this weakness soon. What is happening now is this, Italy accept these illegal emigrant or refugees on humanitarian grounds, they even go to help them when they get in trouble in their boats on their way to Italy, but there are just too many of them arriving every day; so it is a never ending problem. Most of the western world is worried about these refugees’ issues, but they don’t know what to do to stop them.
Let me point out this to you briefly, since I have written the first part of this article, there have been several terrorist attacks that involves illegal emigrants and refugees, but that is not all; for instance, today on the Italian news, we have seen the eternal city of Rome full of uncollected rubbish in the streets. This is another problem that the refugees will produce, since there are more people, there will be more rubbish. Now the rubbish can be collected, but where to take this rubbish will be the problem of the future. We will talk about this when we come back to this in a few days. 
Today I am editing this article, so, I can add other things that have happened since last time I wrote this article. There has been an earthquake in central Italy, where near three hundred people have died. At the same time, in a few days about 15 thousand refugees have arrived in Italy. It is very warring, therefore, I feel sad for the Italian people, since they have to cope with this other disaster. So, in the world there are also more problems every day, that is all one can think about.
The Italian problem of today
As we have talked at the beginning of this article, there are many illegal migrants in the world today; they are illegal migrant because they forcefully go everywhere, even when they are not wanted at all; here I am afraid that I have to say that when they do this forceful migrating they could easily upset the way of life of the people that are forced to receive them against their will; but let us see what could be the causes of this migration, and then extend our search to what could be the outcome of this forceful emigrants that come in unwanted, because I am worried that something nasty might happen in southern Italy soon.
The causes of this unwanted illegal migrating, it is that these refugees are in search of a better life, there are many reasons for that, but above all of them is poverty, sometimes poverty is so bad that people could even starve to death, now that is really when people are very poor and they are forced to find a way how they would be able to feed themselves; here the rest of the world that are better off should really try to help them and there is no question about it.
But on the other hand there are people that are not that poor and they want more because they are greedy, they may start to believe that the rest of the world is better off than they are and therefore they want to grab whatever the others have, and this seems to be the main problem that the entire world is facing today.
Anyhow here we want to talk about the Italian problem, mainly because I am an Italian that has emigrated from southern Italy, and therefore in this article I would like to talk about Italy and my native town and the surrounding towns and countryside. So we would like to start thinking and imagining what could be like in the future to live in southern Italy, in these towns with all these new migrant coming in. But first of all who are these emigrant we have to ask and why they are migrating.
This is the main thing that worries me. These people that are arriving as refugees in Italy and other parts of Europe, they don’t seem to me that they are not able to feed themselves well, in their own country of origin. So, feeding themselves does not seem to be the real problem for these people. Therefore, what other problems they might have one should ask.
Before we are able to answer that question, we would like to define the sort of refugees we are talking about here. There are at least two types of refugees, the real refugees are those people that are forced to run away from a natural disaster or war. The rest of them are not real refugees, they are illegal emigrants that are looking for opportunities to live a better life.
Now, there is nothing wrong for people wanting to live a better life, if the better life they are looking for is hard work, and this hard work is easily available in the country they emigrate, but if they are looking for a better life, just because they believe that the people in the country they have emigrated are better off, just because they have heard that in their country of origin, then there will be great problems. These problems that they could cause, it is the reason why I am concerned.
We could say many other refugee’s things, but we are not going to, as we are stopping here and leave our concerns to the Italian people that are still live there. I feel that at least I have said what I needed to say about my concerns.
I believe that we have said enough in this post, so see you in our next post, where we are going to start with my life story.
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Genzano it story
The Italian problem of today
IS GOING TO BE CONTINUED;
Next time with, my life story
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Some of our hub links