Italians in Island Bay

The story of early Italian settlement in the Wellington region is very much based on what is known as ‘chain migration’. This is where someone will accidentally or purposely travel to a destination, and then invite and persuade others from their village, town or country to join them for the better opportunities that were available in the way of jobs, homes, education and the chance to better themselves. 

While there are many recorded cases of Italians coming to live in New Zealand throughout the 19th century the bulk did not stay long, many moving on to the more hospitable climates of Australia. while some settler groups brought out by the New Zealand Government were just unsuitable for the tasks put in front of them. 

It was hardly their fault. Cooks, candlestick makers, cleaners and stonemasons were brought from northern Italy to build the Wairarapa railway. They were plainly unsuited for the work. Another group was brought in to grow grapes and olives in the southern West Coast - about as far removed from the dry warm and temperate climate you need to grow those sub-tropical fruit as you can get. 

Such mismatching did not just occur in New Zealand. I recently finished reading an excellent book on Italian migrants to the United States which recorded that plainly unsuitable people were recruited to work in coal mines, steelworks and clothing factories. A willing pair of hands and a need to earn money was not always enough to ensure that jobs could be done well. 

Before looking specifically at migration to the Wellington region it is necessary to check out the reasons that people were willing to leave the country of their birth. Italy in the mid-nineteenth century was a collection of largely poor states operating independently. 

After hundreds of years of foreign domination by the likes of the French, Germans, Spanish, Greeks, Turks and Arabs and many more years of provincial and regional rivalry and warfare, Italy was forcibly united by men led by Guiseppe Garibaldi whose name our social club adopted. However the economic benefits of unification and peace were a long way from realisation and major crop failures in the 1870s turned a trickle of migration into a flood. 

So who were those migrants? They were largely young men and boys from villages and small towns all over Italy. They came from good, hardworking peasant families but shared one thing in common: a lack of money, jobs, opportunities and prospects. There were far fewer migrants from the bigger industrial cities of the north like Milan and Turin and from Rome because there was more access to schooling, jobs and more secure futures. In the poor rural and coastal areas away from the cities, parents, who had suffered themselves as peasants at the mercy of harsh weather or land owners ripping them off, came to the conclusion that they had to make the ultimate sacrifice and send their children on long journeys abroad The migrants went looking for "una buona vita" (a better life), a chance to prosper and bring up a family. So where did they go? 

Certainly large numbers moved to neighbouring European countries. There remain today pockets of Italian communities found in cities like Brussels, Frankfurt, Marseilles, Lyon and of course there is a large Italian population in Switzerland. But the new world was opening up and the migrants started to line up to board ships headed for New York, Argentina and Canada. Today barely half a block remains of the community known as Little Italy in Manhattan, but in the last 20 years of the 19th century and the first 30 years of the 20th century, the New York borough was crammed with substandard housing and desperately poor and struggling immigrants. 

Petty crime was rampant and it was probably inevitable that organised crime in the form of the American version of the Mafia flourished. For a good view of what this looked like the second Godfather movie captures it very well. 

The Governor General, Sir Bernard Freybeg often went for a walk around the Bay having been driven to the beginning of the Esplanade where he alighted and set off for his walk. He often met and talked with Guiseppe (Joe Boom) Greco who was not only a fisherman but built his own launches. The Governor watched with interest the building of one of these and was invited to name the launch. Next time the Governor came by he had a name for the launch - the "San Nicolo". At the tender age of 14 Bartolo Russo went to sea as a cabin boy on a sailing ship. The boat was shipwrecked in India, but he transferred to another. His arrival in Wellington in 1881 was an accident. He had broken his leg in the stormy voyage from Lyttelton and was offloaded here so he could recuperate. 

He liked what he saw and opted to stay, working in a variety of jobs, saving hard and establishing himself. He found his niche over in the tiny hamlet of Eastbourne and married the daughter of Italian migrants who had originally settled on the West Coast. He didn't communicate his whereabouts to his family, which dispatched his younger brother, Vittorio, to find him. Again, purely by accident. 

Vitorio made it to Sydney where down on the docks he overheard Italian seamen talking about this man Russo they had met on a stop in Wellington. Vittorio linked up with Bartolo and two more Russo brothers subsequently joined them at Eastbourne. 

The progressive shift of the boats to Island Bay accelerated during the Second World War when the authorities decided that the best way of keeping an eye on the Italians - who, it was suspected, might want to collaborate with German invaders, was to have them all moored in the Bay and have them checked out and in by the local constabulary. 

The first Italian boats at Island Bay were the size of dinghies, initially rowed and then later powered by unreliable and dangerous petrol motors. These early Italians learned a lot about the fishing grounds and the dangerous waters of Cook Strait from local Maori and the early fishermen that had arrived from the Shetland Islands in northern Scotland. These were hardy men who knew about working with fierce tides, changing weather conditions and big waves. By comparison the Italians had been used to calm seas back 

Some of the Italian fishermen had not fished back home but fishing was a job that did not require the migrant to speak, write or read English. While the rewards were sparse then, compared with the huge money earned today from crayfish and wetfish, it was a steady if risky occupation. 

* An amusing anecdote from this time refers to a constabulary member going out on his launch to check out the Island Bay fishermen. On approaching the bay he lost his authoard mater easting his launch adrift. Eventually he was rescued by the very fishermen he une moant to be chapking out. 

32 - Reef Street, Trent Street, Brighton Street, The Esplanade and the bottom of the Parade, all within easy walk of the beach. It was only years later that they moved further afield. 

For the Italians the one constant in their lives was the Catholic Church because the Mass was celebrated in Latin in New Zealand, as it was in Italy. Occasionally an Italian priest would arrive from Italy or Australia and spend three weeks visiting the families, saying Mass in the Italian language. A regular monthly Mass in Italian, celebrated by the Pope's diplomatic representatives in Wellington, began in the early 1980s. In later years the blessing of the fishing fleet was introduced, a ceremony that takes place in Italy annually and which I know is performed in Italian settlements in New South Wales and Argentina. 

The fishermen were never idle. They would spend time repairing the huge nets, making and repairing cane crayfish pots, collecting flax for ties and stretching the thick ropes that would be needed to drag in the fish. With time on their hands they tended to gardens, fed chickens and grew vegetables to sustain the household. Wives would be at home bringing up the children. Families saw each other at Church on Sundays or at special occasions or at the Garibaldi 1938.

For the Italian women their social highlights were christenings, First Communions and weddings and there was always a big turnout for funerals. Traditions were held dear. When news arrived that a family member had died in Italy, the women would immediately dress entirely in black to demonstrate their mourning, remaining that way for up to three years. 

Families also visited each other at weekends and those born in New Zealand got into the habit of seeing movies at Island Bay's old Empire Theatre. 

The weddings were often spectacular affairs at the Winter Show Buildings, attended by up to 400 guests. Whole families were invited - of course the idea of finding babysitters was unheard of. 

Some of the entertainment was provided by a few of the men who could sing some of those Neapolitan songs about love, home and their mothers. The food was standard Kiwi wedding breakfast fare of the time - cold meat, salads, jelly, trifle, cream cakes and ice cream. Today an Italian getting married in Wellington usually has at least an Italian flavour in the food. 

Congregating as they did in Island Bay the Italians of Stromboli and Massalubrense basically lived in a microcosm of their homelands. Such was the small population of Stromboli that it was difficult to find people from the island without a blood link. 

And yet while the Strombolanis were from a more isolated part of Italy it could be argued that they assimilated into New Zealand lifestyles quicker than those from Massalubrense. They were also quicker to get into land-based occupations, including running their own businesses, albeit most of them linked to fish or restaurants. 

They were also quicker to marry outside the group and to non-Italian spouses. The Massesse spent more time in each other's company and were more traditional and conservative, not as quick to get into social pastimes such as dances and going to the pictures. 

It was also more likely that a Massese would marry another from Massalubrense. 

The fact that the Italians chose to live in close proximity to each other was not always an advantage. The local grocery in Island Bay was owned by the Barnao family and so it was possible to speak Italian almost constantly without having to worry about learning to speak good English. When the time came to fill in official documents, such as naturalisation and citizenship, the Italians would rely on New Zealand born people such as Vince Paino to do the After Stromboli and Massalubrense the third strand in the chain migration to Wellington was from the north of Italy, from the rich and fertile fields of the Tuscany, Umbria and Veneto regions. People from several small towns and villages came to settle in the Hutt Valley where they became market gardeners. In Avalon, Taita and Naenae they grew big juicy tomatoes outside and within glasshouses and many other crops. 

So what was New Zealand like for these Italians from such far flung places as Stromboli and Massalubrense? They found it immensely limiting in two ways which are important to Italians - food and drink. When it came to food the Italians largely spurned the traditional Kiwi meal based on meat and three veg. The mutton was greasy, smelt terrible and was cooked to death. Kiwi food tended to be tasteless and unappetising. Kiwis cooked with butter. 

Italians loved their olive oil but the idea of using oil in food was revolting to New Zealanders who saw the Italians' eating habits as strange if not disgusting. How we have moved on from that! 

Unable to access the food they left behind in Italy the women made their own pasta, pizza and pastries; occasionally someone would access a whole pig and then salami and decent pork sausages could be made. Some women had learnt to make mozzarella, the milky white fresh cheese. 

The Garibaldi Club finally secured a hard-to-get import licence and sold pasta, olive oil, cheese and liqueurs, all carrying heavy government taxes and duties. Now, of course, you can buy these products at a supermarket. 

As for drinking some Italians adapted to beer fairly easily but New Zealand wines were unpalatable to them as they were to most people. Imported wine was difficult to get in the early years but later sold by the club.

In the first half of the 20th century the Italian migrants kept a low profile. However the Second World War changed all that when New Zealand was on the opposite side to Italy. The New Zealand Authorities dusted off their First World War regulations which had seen Germans and Turks interned in camps for the duration of that conflict. The authorities had kept a watchful eye over the handful of Italians who claimed to be followers of dictator Benito Mussolini's Fascist Party. These men had demonstrated their allegiance when they paraded in red shirts and gave the Fascist salute at a ceremony at the Cenotaph three years before the war broke out. These men met at the club and talked politics - the majority of migrants treated them with disdain, arguing that politics half a world away were of no interest to them. 

When war broke out the Government drew up lists of Italian migrants, classifying them as enemy aliens. Those classed as a danger to the state were rounded up and taken to Somes Island and held there for three years. Others were sent to work for the state in farms and factories. Some were pressured to abandon their shops and businesses. While the 38 men on Somes Island were internees along with a group of Germans, their families struggled to make ends meet at home. Visits from families were allowed once a month. 

The categorisation of these migrants as enemy aliens was fairly black and white. Among those incarcerated on Somes Island or sent off to factories and farms were men who had had New Zealand citizenship for more than 20 years and, in at least one case, had fought for New Zealand during the First World War. Despite this there was resentment that Italians enjoyed freedom in Wellington while Kiwi soldiers died in Egypt and later at Monte Cassino and other battlefields. 

The chain migration fell away to a trickle about the mid-1960s. 

Why? I guess there were two things related to each other. The first was that Italy's economic circumstances improved enormously and you have to say that one of the reasons was that the country did not have to sustain such a large population of people who had emigrated to the Americas, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Italy became more organised, industrialised and prosperous, and prospects improved for young people. There was no longer the drive to look offshore for opportunities not available at home.