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.
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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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