Snout

At Morningside
where we got eaten by mosquitoes every summer
where the sun filled the front room with light
and warmed the day bed through winter
my mother's domain was at the back of the house.

The kitchen was the cold room
warmed by my mother's old fashioned baking
scones for visitors
sponge cakes for birthdays
and the Sunday roast when Uncle Nat would visit.

My father cooked his favourites from time to time
kidneys sauteed in cream and a dash of whiskey
liver cooked until it had the texture of leather
tripe cooked in milk
and a pig's head in a pot.

My father was a smallgoods rep
with a van full of cured meats
sides of beef
lamb carcasses ready for the butcher's knife
and occasionally a pig's head.

On some Saturdays
the house would be filled with a sweet smell
a pig's head bubbling for hours on the stove 
in the largest pot in the kitchen
only the pig's pink snout visible above the broth


I didn't feel sad for the pig
this was a pig's fate, to feed a family
he (I assumed all food animals to be boys)
looked quite at home in that aluminium pot surrounded
by bay leaves, carrots, onions, cloves, coriander seeds and pepper.

Mum was not a big fan
but supported my fathers obsession
she helped strip the head of flesh (including the tongue)
placed the mix in rectangular metal trays
and placed two heavy irons on top.

Terrines and hand-made brawn
remind me of my father and his food obsessions
they make me think he never lost his Italian roots
and his love of peasant food
though, unlike his father, he never made salami.

I wonder
perhaps the brawn connection was through his Irish mother. 


(c)  Steve Capelin 2015

Destination Veneto

Destination Veneto. Emirates. 11:30pm departure from Brisbane. A freezing night and I’ve packed for a Mediterranean summer. I compromise by slinging a wool scarf around my neck in the hope that it will get me to the airport in comfort. I get a bit paranoid when I fly. It’s because it’s not a bus. There is always another bus. I will need to be focused this next 10 days without Andrea to check in with. Where are we? What time is It? Have we got everything? I’m excited and a little apprehensive. It’s been 25 years since I travelled overseas alone. London 1988 for a three month theatre training program. I loved it that time.

This time I’ll be in Italy in some remote villages with very little English spoken. Ironic that I should be apprehensive since I’ll actually be in my great grandfather’s home territory. He was a native. I will be an outsider.

Before I go through customs I’ve already broken my commitment to remain alert. I try to fill in my customs declaration form as I progress in the line to check in and only when I reach the head of the queue do I realize that I haven’t got my second bag. My carry-on back-pack. It sits abandoned 30 metres behind me where I put it down. No one has tapped me on the shoulder to ask if its mine or to take me off to the bomb disposal centre. It’s a reminder that I’m very much on my own.

Brisbane airport is so familiar to me. I head down the escalators which transport you to a cave like space where passengers mill and fill out forms before entering the customs area. There’s usually a gathering of friends lining the railings above the cavern which we enter calling, waving, crying. Tonight it’s strangely quiet. My wife has put me on the Airport train. She’s so sensible. Besides farewells are not what they used to be. I recall lining the wharf at Hamilton with streamers tying those of us on the land to the passengers aboard the departing passenger liner . There was an air of excitement. Of course, travel overseas has become such an everyday event these days. No longer is it the case that the special moment when the paper ribbons uniting us broke meant we might never see our loved ones again. It had gravitas.

***

I’m early. So, like a proper tourist, I fill in my time shopping. For what? I conjure up a need to buy something special for Marina whom I will see for the first time in 25 years in Orsago. The girl at the souvenir shop suggests a pendant. I say it’s not a romance so I’d rather stick to something less personal. I buy a jewellery box purportedly painted by a central desert Aboriginal woman. It’s laquer ware so is not really an Australian product.

***

If your memory of flying is one of romance and the exotic forget it. Airlines have fallen on hard times. Emirates serves up four meals in fifteen hours and all are appalling. The one thing they do right is serve the worst one first (a doughy shredded chicken and salad bread roll) so that we might be fooled that later meals are something a little more edible. Who prepares this rubbish. And why feed us bad food frequently. Feed us one bad meal and then cut your losses – stop there. If your budgets are that tight we can help you. Feed us less or send the food to the needy. But even they would have standards.

I usually don’t mind flying but this seems interminable. I can’t get comfortable. My bony bum aches. The two teenage brothers beside me have a four hour fight over who should have the arm rest they share. The younger one wins. Their parents and Greek grandmother sit in the row in front and are happy to let them fight it out. Their father is one of those people who has the capacity to make everything interesting sound boring. He knows too much and insists on sharing his knowledge.

He’s taking his family to Greece for a week and then he will then join a group of thirty obsessives who will ride the Tour de France three hours ahead of the race proper. I hope his wife and his Yaya have got some shopping planned.

***

I’m reading a book ahead of touchdown in Italy to get me in the mood. Italian Ways by Tim Parks documents his experience of Italian rail travel pretty much along the route I will travel. It’s a story of convoluted Italian ticketing systems where every step seems designed to thwart the basic purpose of getting from A to B efficiently. It sounds like madness. It’s funny, but a little daunting. Thanks Tim.

***

Stop in Singapore where the parents of Harry and Charlie (very Greek) move the younger into their row and put YaYa with Harry and me. It’s quiet again, though I see where dad gets his obsession with detail from. YaYa is intent on helping Harry understand the ways of the world on her computer map and goes into a lot of detail.

Touchdown in Dubai is in full daylight. I can’t imagine why people would want to stop here. All I can see is sand and houses made of materials much the colour of sand. They’re very neatly arranged around cul de sacs. The desert stretches to the horizon. There are sparse patches of cultivated fields around small villages outside the city. They look very poor. The meager fields look like a community garden. Enough to support the extended family. They are certainly not the food bowl for Dubai. And yet there are swimming pools in almost every residential complex only a matter of kilometres away on the fringe of the new city suburbs. Water but no oasis. I can’t see any palm trees. I can’t see any trees at all.

Dubai Terminal is huge. It’s an immense and expensively fitted out Nissan Hut, curved roof and sides creating a cylinder. We’re in a giant hot dog. It mimics the shape of the plane we’ve just suffered in for 15 hours. Do they not understand our need to escape. Our need for relief from the aluminium sardine tube.

My five hours in transit in Dubai is spent watching escalators make their never ending journey to nowhere, observing the other tourists trapped here and, well, window shopping.

On a positive note I do like the Emirates steward’s uniforms. Sand coloured dresses with a slash of red in a pleated section at the bottom. The same red then as a headpiece and a flowing white scarf which curls from one side of the hat to the other, under their chins, like a never-ending waterfall. If only their chefs could take a lead from their design team.

The Dubai to Venice leg is punctuated with one acceptable meal unfortunately accompanied by another which is awful. Biryani lamb with rice is quite edible but the shrimp cocktail is appalling. It was billed as an appetizer. What a misnomer.

“Marinated baby shrimps in a classic cocktail sauce served on a thinly sliced cabbage salad.” If honesty in menus were de riguer then it might better have been described thus: “ Two barely recognizable week old albino shrimp hiding in a corner surrounded by shredded limp salad.”

Michelin rating: inedible.

I had hoped for a nice Mediterranean gentleman or lady as my travelling companion. Someone I could practice my Italian with. Instead I was paired with a perfectly lovely boy from Calcutta on his way to Trieste for business. He turned out to have awful sinus problems. Perhaps during his stopover in Dubai he’d got caught in a sand storm or disappeared into the dense smog hanging low over the plains. He was a snorter. He cleared his nose at least eight times ai. That’s over two thousand over five hours. I counted them.

His nasal technique had a sound similar to when you check the pressure in your tyres and you let off a shot of air to test the system. Maybe he worked in a garage.

My Missing Life - My missing great grandfather

One hundred and thirty years after Lorenzo Capelin disembarked in Sydney under a name different to the family name he carried for the rest of his life and which he passed to hundreds of descendants; and ten years of research into this mystery I might have cracked it (see below). There may very well be documentation pertaining to my great grandfather as Lorenzo Perin. I had almost given up hope. I'm checking whether this is a yes or a no. It looks like a positive even though the translation seems to say differently.

Needless to say I have replied with further questions and, as I will be in Brugnera in exactly one week, I hope I can get a clearer picture on the spot.

I'll keep you posted.

My request (thanks to Google translate)

'1 maggio 2013
Commune di Prata di Pordenone, Italia

Spettabile Direzione,
Per una ricerca sulla mia familigia desidero ottenere il certifico di nascita.
Nome: Lorenzo Perin (Supre nome Cappellin)
Data di nascita: 1837
Luogo di : Ghirano
Nome del padre: Giacomo Perin
Nome della madre: Teresa Cattai

Sono in Italia in giugno 2013 per ricerca.
Rimanendo in attesa di Suocortese riscontro, porgo distinti saluti.'

Literal translation (no thanks to Google translate):

'May 1, 2013
Commune Prata di Pordenone, Italy

Dear Management,
For a search on my familigia want to get certify the birth.
Name: Lorenzo Perin (Suprenome Cappellin)
Date of birth: 1837
Place: Ghirano
Father's name: Jacomo Perin
Mother's Name: Teresa Cattai

I'm in Italy in June 2013 for research.
Listening for your reply, Best regards,'

 The reply today:

'In riferimento a Vs. richiesta e-mail del 01.05.2013, si comunica che non
> è possibile trasmettere il certificato di nascita del Suo avo PERIN
> Lorenzo, poichè, come risulta dall'esame dei registri angrafici qui
> conservati, è nato nel Comune di Brugnera il 27.10.1837.
> A disposizione per eventuali chiarimenti, si porgono distinti saluti.
> L'Ufficiale d'Anagrafe deleg.
> Giovanna Romano'

 Translates as:

'In reference to your request e-mail address of 01.05.2013, notice is hereby
given that you can not transmit the birth certificate of his grandfather
PERIN
Lorenzo, since, as is apparent from an examination of records angrafici here
preserved, was born in the municipality of Brugnera on 10/27/1837.
At your disposal for any clarification, you
Best regards.
The Journal of Registry deleg.
Giovanna Romano' 

I think this means I should approach Commune di Brugnera for the next step.

The Promised Land

In six more sleeps I board a flight to Venice to begin my ten days following my great grandfather's footsteps.
I've had some great outcomes already both locally and in Italy.

You may remember that my two dreams were to stand on the land of my forebears in Italy and to do the same in New Guinea where the boatload of 350 Italians were dumped in 1880.

Last week, thanks to my friend Julian Pepperell and his fishing networks, I had lunch with a young couple from New Britain (PNG). Oliver and his PNG wife live in Kopoko and often travel across the strait between New Britain and new Ireland on fishing ventures chasing big game fish. Oliver was fascinated with the Italian story. He had heard little of it in PNG and is keen to help. Planning for a visit to this most remote of coastlines suddenly took a giant leap forward.

In Italy I have made contact with the man who has spent the greater part of 20 years researching the family name (Perin) from which I am descended. He has offered to give me a copy of his beautifully researched and produced book as a centre piece to the Capelin/Perin family display I am helping put together for the New Italy Museum. I will meet his daughter. I will also meet for the second time in 25 years the young woman (now 48) whom I first met in the Orsago municipio in 1988. Remarkably she still has the thank-you post card that I sent her that many years ago.

Finally I have made contact with a gentleman in Marseille who will escort me around the port and talk to me about Marseille in the late 19th Century. Marseille was the departure point for the 350 Italians when they left their homes in Veneto headed overland to board a boat for Barcelona and the beginning of their ill-fataed voyage.

Fingers crossed I don't catch the flu which is currently festering in my household. I have taken to sleeping in another bedroom from my wife! Is that selfish?

New Italy Old Italy

Paddy and his sister in law

From Woodburn it's a straight run to our destination, a pit stop half way to nowhere along the Pacific Highway. Not 'Nuova Italia' as it would originally have been named, but simply New Italy. It's a collection of mud brick buildings housing a cafe, bookshop and the fading remnants of the Italian Pavilion from Brisbane's Expo '88. There's also a large barn structure with open beams and natural ventilation which houses memorabilia from the original 1885 settlement. By 1920 the last of the Italians had given up on this place, a site distressingly similar to the poor land of Veneto from which they had escaped. While not the utopian dream which had driven their journey, it did offer opportunity rather than the inevitability of poverty.

The descendants have moved to better land or moved away. My grandfather and his brother set up a thriving fruit and vegetable business in Leichhardt in Sydney; a branch of the Spinaze family had moved into sugar in the Pomona area north of Noosa Heads a good 400 kilometres north. Through hard work many purchased dairy farms and sugar holdings along the Richmond River.

One hundred years after the original descendants arrived, a group of descendants, none of whom spoke Italian, few of whom had immediate recollections of the original settlement, nevertheless felt driven to create a museum on the site. In the twenty first century the 'New Italy Carnivale' brings together a curious mix of descendants and locals to share stories and keep alive a memory.

Add caption

I'm travelling with my Uncle Paddy Powell, a name as Irish as the name of the closest regional town, Ballina. That's not uncommon. His mother was a Bazzo. My grandmother was a Kilcoyne. It went both ways. We arrive in time for Mass, the first event on each of these days.About 80 seriously Catholic people sit in a large unpretentious room. Curious life-size plaster cast Venetian peasants and aristocrats stare down at us from a mock balcony above the makeshift altar.

Paddy scans the seats for familiar faces. He's looking for his friend Maureen who has supported him through the hard years of caring for his wife Rita, my aunt. I only recognise two faces in the congregation, both of whom are relatives whom I have only met recently. As my eyes wander among the pews I'm conscious of looking for faces like mine. Angular faces with large noses and pale skin, blue eyed northerners.

There are plenty of ruddy complexions and pale skins but mostly broad Australian farmers faces - the Irish. Among the other there are dark eyes, dark haired, dark skinned southerners - more recent migrant arrivals. I can't see me anywhere.

My search is broken by the priest. He's welcoming us in Italian He's clearly not Italian but he is fluent. a Lismore priest with no Italian would be estranged from half his parishioners. Italian prayers, Italian hyms, Italian responses. Most of us don't have a clue. Two ladies in front of me sing with gusto and depart from the script with their own responses. They are real Italians. I concentrate on picking up a phrase here and there in preparation for my imminent trip to the villages of my descendants in Veneto. Paddy drifts off and causes a mild disruption when he attempts to rescue a skink who has become disoriented and finds itself in the no-mans land of the aisle space. Paddy knows it's about to fill with the feet of the fervent lining up for communion. The ladies in front react with shock as Paddy ushers his new friend from the aisle towards safety under their chairs.

Outside the numbers have begun to swell. Paddy is a bit overwhelmed. It's his first visit without Rita. "I think I'll just have a little wander around and see if I can find some familiar faces" he says. "Will you be okay Paddy?" I have a sense that I am Paddy's guardian for the day. And away he went, wobbling through the crowd on his twenty year old metal knees.I'd noticed that Paddy had a tendency to sway when stationary. I figured it was like the steering on an old car. There was a fair bit of play in the joints and he was forced to constantly rebalance himself.

I take the opportunity to reconnoitre the displays in the museum. I've taken on the task of organising a family  cabinet in which we'll tell our story. It's a great idea. With challenges. One hundred and thirty years after their arrival and with our original family being a blend of three families  - two mothers, two fathers, only one of each surviving and finally ending up as the family of Lorenzo with ten surviving children and carrying two family names means we have some serious gaps.

An hour later I find Paddy in animated conversation with fellow Richmond Valley locals. He's seated at a heavy wooden table alongside my new found second cousins, one of whom I've never met. In the background a slightly overweight Italian singer in his late forties is channelling Dean Martin and charming the ladies with his versions of 'Volare' and 'O Sol a Mio'. He's dressed in a cobalt blue jacket which, at one point, he casts aside, exposing his broad chest and his luxuriant growth of Sicilian hair - all part of his seduction of the audience. Having exhausted his Italian repertoire he launches into a set of Elvis numbers.

Paddy's in his late 80s and he's been on his feet for five hours now and he's beginning to fade. He's had his obligatory plate of  spaghetti bolognese and a glass of rough red. He's ready to go. As we prepare to exit, my second cousin is in animated conversion with his brother. He's convinced that the photo I've given him of his grandmother is definitely not her. I offer him as much information as I can and then decide to leave him to it. "You'd better take that up with Linda (another cousin in his line who has supplied the photo)" I say as I back away. "Let me know what you all decide."

I'd hoped to complete the family cabinet by the end of the year but with ten descendant lines these small details will become the sticking points.

Italian Superstition

We're not really as sophisticated as we'd like to think.  A little over a century ago my great grandfather was contemplating the biggest decision of his life. Whether to take a risk on and take the family on a journey to an unknown destination or stay and live in poverty in 19th century Italy. How did he make his decision?

It is a tradition in northern Italy to build and set fire to an enormous bonfire on the feast of the Epiphany in early January. It has its orignins in pagan roman rituals. Its surrounded by superstition. A figure of a witch is burnt atop the bonfire symbolising the end of all the bad luck of the past year and clearing the way for the next. The direction in which the smoke blows is also a portent of things to come. Blow one way and it will be a good year. Blow the other and it heralds disaster. 

Here's an excerpt from my story. The night the decision is made.

The men have separated into two groups now. One group is highly animated and deep in conversation the other drifting off towards the tables. I approach my father and take his hand. He looks at me and smiles and then looks at the bonfire which is now a raging volcano cracking and snapping as it accelerates towards its climax.


‘Look Dominic. Which way are the sparks flying?’ I look to the peak of the fiery mountain and see a spray of sparks explode from the top.

‘Which way is that?’ I ask pointing to the far side of the square. They are blowing away from us, neither towards where I know the mountains begin nor towards the sea and Venezia which I know lies to the south. ‘Is that Milano and the River Po?’

I have learnt the geography of my country from maps on walls and views out my classroom window. Signor Batistuzzi takes us out into the school grounds and has us first face the mountains. This is north he tells us. Then we pretend we can see Venezia to the south. He teaches us north and south and then tells us that even further south lies Roma and the ancient civilizations of the Romans. And further south still the islands of Sardegna and Sicilia where the Italians speak another language, eat different food and have black skin.

To the north lies Austria and beyond the mountains countries with many cultures and many languages until there is nowhere left to go. Only ice and frozen wastes. Signor Batistuzzi does not tell us much about the east except to say that if you go far enough you reach the lands of China and of silk and mystery. And even further lie the islands of the Pacifique, undiscovered islands of mystery and magic.

He has never been east of Udine but of the west he has many stories. Many sound like another country and some are. He tells of getting lost in the richest streets of Milano, of travelling on steam driven trains between cities, of lakes a large as seas and of his own home, once part of Italy, now France.

‘Milano is West?’ ‘ Yes’ confirms my father. ‘So the sparks must be flying…’ and here I stop and face the invisible mountains and repeat my learnt by heart compass points mantra. If I raise my right arm it points in the direction of the disappearing sparks. ‘It’s east papa. They are travelling east.’ My father hesitates.

‘Another unproductive year with another poor harvest’ my father observes. ‘The signs are clear. We will not be here to see another summer Dominic.’ He says this quite calmly. We both look towards mama and Marietta whose aprons swirl as they move between tureen and table ladling out portions of hot soup. I wait but there is no more information forthcoming. He pats me on the shoulder and pushes me towards the feast.

Spirit World - PNG

Johnson and Johnson in the remote islands of Vanuatu

When I was in Vanuatu on an AusAid project on   Pentecost I participated in a farewell celebration. The night began with a mock confrontation between the custodians of the village and the visitors done as a dance. This was enacting and reinforcing the Kastom protocols which all villages abide by. Outsiders can't just walk into a village and presume to be welcome. In previous times you risked death and perhaps became a main dish at the evening meal. The ceremony on Pentecost climaxed when the women of the village doused all of the visitors with white powder. I couldn't place what this familiar smelling powder was. I presumed it was a traditional scented concoction made from some secret ingredient from the jungle surrounding us. Turned out it was Johnson's baby powder no less. I never quite understood why this remte village would want to shower me with talcum powder. The significance escaped me. And I wondered what would have been used before the coming of Johnson & Johnson.

My recent interest in Papua New Guinea has shed light on this.

Malangan mask

  New Ireland has one of the most complex ceremonial traditions of all the PNG islands and regions. The Malagan festival is a multi-purpose ceremony where the dead are honoured and where many parallel traditional transactions take place and conflicts are resolved. Villages can only afford to stage the ceremony once every few years.

Coral ready for transformation

Masks, singing, fire, feasting and frenzied dancing all mix together over an extended period of ceremony. A century ago this might have continued for as long as a year. These days, work, school, government and the rising costs of all things dictate that a weekend is preferred.
In Vanuatu, Johnson & Johnson has replaced lime. Its another example of the encroachment of westernisation on these rich traditions.

Lime, mustard seed and betel nut

Lime is still used in PNG where it is a vital ingredient in the betel nut habit. Mustard seed, dipped in Lime and chewed with betel nut creates a mild 'high' and a mouth full of red saliva. The streets run red with spit. It's common in India and Malaysia and many other Asian countries.
The lime is produced from dead coral burnt and then crushed to powder.

Lime at the market

Betel nut enthusiast

In traditional ceremonies Lime has powerful symbolic qualities. Pigs, slaughtered as part of the ritual have their snout marked with a stripe of lime to indicate that they have entered a higher state. Dancers are sprayed with lime to drive away any evil spirits which may be around and guests are sprinkled with lime to indicate that they have been accepted into this sacred ceremony and to ensure they don't bring bad spirits with them.

Now I get it.

Source Michael Moran "Beyond the Coral Sea"

 

Big fish, adventures in PNG

My mate Julian is in Papua Nui Guinea as we speak. He's my advance researcher for my trip to the beach on which Lorenzo and his shipmates were abandoned in 1881.

Julian has no Italian blood though he loves cooking and does some spectacular Italian dishes. Julian's passion is fish. Not catching and cooking so much as catching and releasing. He's a Marine Biologist and works across the nation monitoring and tracking the lives of the BIG fish of the open oceans. In fact "Fishes of the Open Ocean" is the title of his beautiful coffee table book.

He is New Guinea for three weeks cruising around the islands and dropping in on remote villages to meet villagers who have contacted him over recent years having caught some of his tagged specimens and written to his address on the Sunshine Coast giving him dates and times for his research data. What a great job!

Julian will be taking heaps of photos and keeping a detailed journal with the intention of turning this trip into a book.

So Julian if you read this I hope you're having a great time. Don't forget to ask a few questions about Port Praslin and the southern coast of New Ireland.

I'm reading Michael Moran's "Beyond the Coral Sea" at the moment and its fabulous. He spent three months in the early 2000s moving around the islands of PNG researching the early colonial history and turning his journey into a fascinating book. It's only a little over 100 years since the German empire was making its presence felt and only in the 20th Century did the British and Australians take a strong and active interest in this country which contains something like a third of the planets languages and immensely rich bio-diversity.

When Lorenzo and his 250 peasant comrades were dumped in New Ireland they would have encountered locals who had had no contact with white culture. They, the locals, were quite happy to eat them in fact. And this, it's presumed, was the fate of those who left the settlement to make contact with missionaries who, they believed, were based on the eastern coast of the island. It was a forbidding landscape and remains so.The only remnants of the 1881 settlement are likely to be crosses marking burial sites and these have, more than likely, become driftwood.

Actually standing on that beach feels like a powerful way to connect with my ancestors - it has already captured me though I am as yet over 1500 kms distant.

In the Footsteps of Lorenzo - Italy 2

 My Italian Adventure.

My plan for Italy is to spend 10 days traversing the country east to west beginning in my great Grandfathers home village (or my best guess of his home village). He's been a tricky bloke to nail down. There are multiple clues in death certificates and oral stories but no documents. No birth certificate, no baptism registration. There is a recent global family of origin family tree put together by Antonio Perin in which Lorenzo Perin appears under his original family name. This is evidence of his existence and confirms that he did live in the district where I will begin my journey.

In 1880, between February and April, Lorenzo and Catterina and two children made the journey from their kitchen to Marseilles overland. What transport they used I'm not sure, but it would have been an arduous trip for a family carrying their worldly possessions and little money. Over 300 Italians from their district made this journey around the same time, so perhaps they were travelling with company. Their ultimate destination was Barcelona, their embarkation point for paradise.

They may have travelled by horse and cart as would all journeys in the mid 19th Century but part of the journey may have been by rail. Between 1860 and 1880, after the unification of Italy, there was an explosion of rail networks across Northern Italy. It would, in fact, have been possible to undertake almost the entire journey by rail in 1880.

For a peasant family that would have been unheard of, unimaginable ten years earlier. Could they have afforded such travel? What would it have cost? How often did these services operate and did they connect? I don't have answers to these questions but I intend to gain some insight into the modern experience of this journey as I attempt to retrace their steps using the local rail network.

Italian Rail Network 1861

I will buy tickets at local stations for trains with no booking system using my halting "Italian for Travellers". I will plan each next step as I go, checking that my assumed itinerary is the one that locals confirm may have been the route of my ancestors.

At this stage I will begin near Conegliano in Veneto and follow a route which will take me via Treviso, Padua, Verona, Brescia, Bergamo, Milan, Novara, Torina, Cuneo, Ventimigia the cross the border to Nice and finally Marseilles, the second city of France. Interestingly Nice, France's third city, was most recently part of Piedmont, Italy until it was annexed by France in 1860.

Each stage is short and will give give me time to walk the streets of these mostly minor and middle sized towns at the end of each day before returning next morning to pick up my next train.I have allowed about seven days for this. You can get a fast train and complete the journey in one day but I imagine Lorenzo and his comrades may have spent close to a month on this leg of their trip. I want the local experience.

Italian Rail Network 1870

At this stage I am not planning to take the boat from Marseilles to Barcelona as they did. Nor am I planning to take the sea and ocean voyage across the Mediterranean through the Suez Canal and across the Indian Ocean.

I have a friend who did do a similar journey down the Rhine (he's of German descent) following the same route as a passenger on a container vessel.

My sea experience will come on my next adventure. I am planning to visit Papua New Guinea to stand on the beach where the 300 Italians were delivered to begin a disastrous six months in their imagined, but devastatingly disappointing, paradise in the Pacific.

In the footsteps of Lorenzo - Italy 1

I am writing a fictionalised account of the Lorenzo and Catterina Capelin family from the beginning of their involvement in the Nouvelle France scheme to the final disastrous outcome.

In writing a set of characters based on fact but created in fiction I have become deeply engaged in research, trying to understand a life as lived by a peasant family in Italy over 120 years ago.

I am being drawn into the world of the 19th century. Food, family, history, politics, geography, culture, religion - each page of my manuscript demands another layer of information.

I have googled myself to a standstill; I have bought cookbooks containing traditional recipes from the Veneto region; I have discovered R. L. Stevenson's first person story of 19th Century transatlantic travel in steerage class ("The Amateur Immigrant"); I have walked the streets of local villages via Google Earth; I have put myself in the shoes of an eight year old boy experiencing Christmas and Ephiphany celebrations in his home village in 1880 - no Santa Claus, no presents on Christmas morning; but fasting and religious observation followed a week later by huge bonfires and pagan rituals on a combined Winter Solstice and Ephiphany celebration (Jan 6), with presents delivered by an aged witch-like character, La Befana, who searches year after year for the location of baby Jesus. She is said to have rejected an offer from the Three Wise Men to accompany them on their journey. She was too busy! She now seeks out each household hoping to find the place where Jesus resides. She covers all possibilities by leaving offerings at every house with a child in case that might be the one.

This is my first work of fiction. At first I was frustrated by the distractions of the research process and was guided by the advice of my writing mentor "beware research which doesn't result in writing". But as I progress I am loving it. I never studied history at school or university and, as a late starter, I am revelling in this new venture into lives beyond mine.

I've always read and I've always, in travelling, chosen a book about the history of the country I am visiting to read while on my journey (Barcelona -Robert Hughes; How the Irish Saved Civilization - Thomas Cahill; Walking the Camino - Tony Kevin; Europe East & West - Norman Davies; and later this year when I visit Berlin, Stasiland - Anna Funder) but they only serve as introductions with limited insights into culture.

In the case of Lorenzo, I have followed this research for the past 18 months and expect a further 18 months immersed in this chase.

Research is great but its limitation is that it's paper based. I need to walk the streets of the villages where my characters lived and breathed. To that end I am planning two adventures in the next 18 month period. The first will be to Italy and the second to Papua New Guinea.

Cousin country - New Italy

Pretty much the only evidence remaining

New Italy (mud brick) Museum and cafe

 My family history project continues. This last week took me to Evans Head and the nearby New Italy Museum where I met my namesake and second cousin once removed, Stephen John Capelin. For the first time I understood the "once removed" concept.

We are second cousins but I am a generation ahead of him even though he is almost the same age. We are among a line of Stephens. Stephen John's father was John Stephen, his father a Stephen John and his father a Stephen Antonio. I have a first cousin Stephen Anthony (from the same ancestry though different surname - his mother was a Capelin) and I have a brother Michael Anthony.

With a couple of hundred relatives on my father's Italian side there are also a string of Lawrences and Larrys (one in every generation of my direct line) and the original Lorenzo from whom we are all descended and whom is the subject of my historical fiction - a work in progress.

Free admission - a display of family stories and heirlooms

Stephen was in possession of a wonderful document which fills in a few gaps in our story. You may have read previously that we are Capelin by nickname only, but an enduring nickname which goes back at least two hundred years (correctly spelt Cappellin and meaning 'Little Hat' - my blog name). We are of the Perin family. One, Antonio Perin of Veneto, has undertaken an international search for the world family of Perins. This has taken him to Australia, France, Belgium, North America and Brazil. We are all related and all come from an area in Northern Italy over which you could throw a table cloth. He has published this as "Familie Perin Nel Mondo'. It all looks authentic.

Marginal country on which the Italians eked out an existence

We Capelins (also a John along with my son Nicholas, not a repeated Italian name, and their wives Ellen and Elizabeth) met at the New Italy Museum, a roadside stop on the Pacific Highway and home to the story of the fifty families who travelled to Australia in 1881 on a disastrous voyage to a phantom paradise.

I thought I had almost all the facts in place but, and this is the fascinating thing about history and family history, it is never quite finalised; there is always more.

The land has largely reverted to bushland

In this case we spent three hours (we had met only once before in 2005) on a rollicking ride through family stories and documents and, in a spirit of discovery, unearthed a few new elements for each of us. For my part, I have been writing an historical/fictional account of Lorenzo and his family exploring life in Veneto and the conversations and events which might have lead to the decision to up stumps and choose the unknown rather than struggle to survive in peasant Italy of the times. At this point I have Lorenzo as the dreamer, his wife Catterina as the pragmatist and bitter about her lost childbearing years and eight year old Dominic as the narrator.

A local recipe for (a lot of) salami

I had presumed that, given Catterina had a thirteen year old and an eight year old, there would probably have been other children born in intervening years whom she may have lost. Stephen's document proves this to be true. She is listed as having given birth to three other children in Italy who are not mentioned elsewhere and did not accompany them on the voyage. Is it possible that Lorenzo and Catterina left some behind with relatives to make the voyage less arduous? Unlikely. I can't imagine any parent making that choice. And thus my confidence in my narrative has been reinforced by a day at Evans Head Beach. The surf on the last day of my camping trip was great by the way - big rolling foamers cresting and crashing into deep clear water.

Sadly Catterina did not survive the voyage and lies in an unmarked grave in Noumea. This death (in childbirth) will be the climactic moment in the story.

For Stephen John (second cousin once removed) it raised the possibility that his great-great grandfather Dominic (Lorenzo's son) may have been a twin as there are two births recorded in 1872.  And still no documentary evidence (birth/baptism) of our existence in Italy as Perin or Capelin or Cappellin. I plan a visit in June to do some further digging.

These are the snippets of information and hoped for documents which keep us family historians questing for answers to sometimes unknown questions.

For those who have come this far, well done. For those who find family history a tad tiresome I could swerve towards something racier on my grandmother's Irish side. A potential potboiler featuring a divorce involving two generations of aspirational Italian and Irish peasants and the progeny of one of Australia's high profile industrialists. Another time maybe.

New writing challenge

I've got to the point with my family research where I've captured much of what I need of the contemporary story. I've filled a number of gaps though there are still plenty of holes. When did my grandfather set up his bakery in Woodburn? And was he really run out of town after the war to create work opportunities for the returning diggers? And was the fact that he was Italian a factor? And when did he buy his 'doomed to fail' cane farm? I have a lead on the last one but I need to go to Sydney to the Land Titles Office.

At this point I am building up courage to try and write about my great grandfather and his family's journey from northern Italy to Australia via New Guinea and Noumea. I'm reading about Italy in the 19th Century, researching life in steerage class on migrant ships and watching the film "Tree of Wooden Clogs". This 1978 film depicts peasant life in northern Italy and is performed by a cast of locals. It's very good.

My major dilemma is finding the story 'voice. I'm playing with having Dominic and Marietta, Lorenzo's children, tell the story. I'm inspired by 'Mr. Pip", the Loyd Jones novel which I read recently, in which the story of island life on Bougainville during a period of major civil disruption is told through the eyes of a 14 year old. It's beautifully done.

Here's my first attempt at an opening. I'm putting it out there so I can see it from a readers perspective.


Lorenzo's story.

Time, history, evolution, call it what you will, travels a path none can predict. The only thing certain is that it   always continues its forward journey slowly carving a track through time like a glacier. Familes grow and merge and dissolve; children are born, grow into adults and have children of their own. The family glacier splits into ever more and finer slivers as it progresses. Occasionally the glacier follows a deviation, a fault-line leading nowhere and that line stagnates, melts and dies.

                                                              ***
I wasn't destined to have my line die out. I had ten children, five boys and five girls and the first of these, Stephen Antonio, produced a son, Stephen Anthony, who produced a further son, christened Stephen John.

In an unusual occurrance in this Italian descendant family, my step brother (we shared a father) had in his line another Stephen John. I say unusual because, while the first family seems to have become enamoured of the Stephen moniker and there are plenty of Giovannis and Johns across the generations, Stephen is otherwise, rare. Add to that, the fact that these two families had not met in over one hundred years, so there was no conscious or unconscious influence at play. It seems that this doubling of names was purely coincidental.

It was more than one hundred and thirty years after my birth that these two Stephen John Capelins met, via email I believe, a form unknown in my era. In fact my father couldn't even write his own name let alone compose a letter or postcard. Their common link was my father, Lorenzo.

                                                              ***

One of my first clear memories of my father is the night of the argument which changed our lives.

It had been another bleak day with an icy wind blowing from the distant northern alps. Our village sat exposed on the plains, its back turned to the annual buffeting and sleeting rains of winter. The cows agreed. They stood, forlorn in the late afternoon dun coloured light, their tails limply dropping over exposed rumps giving what little protection tails could. Their udders were full, their eyes sad, as they stood on the rough stony yard awaiting entry to the milking yard and to the warmth of their overnight stalls. The dark was early and a welcome relief from the half dark of the day.        ................................................................



More details will expose his relationship within the household and his insights into his father's decision making and way of thinking. He will be the voice of common sense.We'll learn that this is Domenic speaking through the dialogue in the next few pages. I'm also thinking that his sister Marietta will be the emotional voice in the story, the one who sees the emotional impact on the family and her mother.

Good to have begun, even if the story moves completely away from this beginning. It's challenging because I've never really written in a voice other than my own. 

Cryptic Christmas

2011.

I've aged only one year
but my children's combined tally
creeps closer to my maturing years.

I've written a small mountain of words
but the memoir in me
grows faster than I can capture it.

I've been a teacher in a Pacific idyll
but I've learnt more
than I've imparted.

I've immersed myself
in the history of my community
only to discover that I know very little.

I've lived my 37th year
in a partnership both
baffling and satisfying.

I've read a lot
becoming a better reader,
more discerning and insightful.

I've spent more time alone
and found good company within,
and out and about.

I haven't been paid
but I have worked hard
hoping the tax man is losing interest.

There were things lost -
a job, or two; a son leaves home
But I have no memory of funerals.

I have valued relationships and relatives
I have valued time and also tide
I am again a fortunate man.


Have a great holiday season everyone.
See you in 2012.

steve aka 'little hat'

Mortality

I am surrounded by reminders of my mortality. I decide to visit Sydney to track down some family sites which I hope will help me fill in some gaps in the family saga. I call my cousin and suggest we spend a couple of days together exploring. The visit will coincide with an old friend's 60th birthday celebration.

I arrive three hours late after my flight out of Brisbane has been cancelled and a seat found for me on a later plane. Cousin Steve picks me up at the airport and we talk about the state of the nation and his state of health. The economy is pretty shaky and Steve's year hasn't been much better. He's had a hip operation and then a strange virus which doctors couldn't identify but which attacked his heart. He makes light of it but later his wife tells me he's definitely not running on all four cylinders. This is ironic for a man with a passion for cars. He has a 1950 something MG TF convertible in his garage which he has done up and in which he goes touring. He and the car both look pretty good but they are, to be honest, both getting on.

Steve and I spend a day mooching around inner city Leichhardt uncovering a series of Italian and Irish connections. Leichhardt was, and is, Sydney's 'Little Italy' and was the first port of call for many migrants looking for affordable housing. The Fruit and Vegetable shop from 1910 has gone but a few locals tell us there was still a fruit and vege business on the corner of Paramatta Rd and Norton Street until the recent past.

The Kilcoyne family (two Kilcoyne girls married two Capelin boys) had settled in Leichhardt in the early 1880s, about the same time Lorenzo, the original Italian connection, was disembarking from his disastrous venture to the Pacific with 200 other Italians. Their house is still there and the woman living there is home and shows us through. We are following a warm trail. We visit the local Catholic Church, St Fiacres, where the weddings took place and confirm that the wedding photos were definitely taken in front of a backdrop featuring fake pillars. I check out St Mary's Cathedral the next day hoping to find the very pillars there - but am again disappointed. We track down two other houses built by various members of the family and have a coffee at Bar Sport, a place that my Sydney friends tell me later is an icon of Norton Street. The coffee is good.

The next day I am at my friend Mark's house in Glebe, having slept on the floor overnight. He's the one turning 60. His family have arrived from Rockhampton and Perth and we are 11 in the house over three days. Well, most of them have. His sister in law can't make it as she is nursing her sister who is seriously unwell. I also learn that a cousin of Mark's wife has been knocked down by a car and taken to hospital the day before. She's from Israel and looked left instead of right as she went to jog across the road on her morning run. Her partner was well in front of her and didn't know she'd been hit, only that she never arrived back from the run. Sydney's like that. People disappear all the time. After a series of frantic phone calls they track her down. She's okay. It was only a glancing blow.

Around mid morning a call comes from another relative apologising that they won't be able to make the party. The husband has just been taken to hospital having suffered a heart attack. It's turning out to be quite a weekend.

Understandably the conversation for the remaining two days often revolves around health. The party goes well. No one is taken to hospital, though a few are going home a bit worse for wear thanks to Mark's generous bar tab.

I visit the Police Museum and am disappointed to find I don't have a National Security file - I was always too afraid to really stick my head up too high during the Vietnam protest years.

Next day Cousin Steve and I drive to Woollongong to visit our only remaining uncle on the Capelin side. Cyril is 83 and pretty unsteady on his feet but he has a memory of a teenager and tells us stories with people's names, dates and even the time of day. He swears his longevity is based around his heavy diet of dairy products and cream.

On the way back to Sydney for my flight home I get a text message from my wife, Andrea, telling me that my younger brother has completed his angiogram procedure and that they've inserted a stent into one of his major arteries. He's going to live. He retired three weeks ago and has been at the hospital every other day since then having tests after some chest pain. Can I pick him up from hospital the next day as his wife is on crutches after foot surgery and can't drive; Andrea isn't available as she'll be at work - its her third last week; she's been retrenched.

It seems I'm the only one left standing. I feel fine. But I do have strange thoughts as I swim my twenty laps of my local pool where I wonder how long it would take the other swimmers to notice my body on the bottom of the pool if I karked it mid swim.

Marina - an Italian connection in Orsago

In 1988 I spent three months in London studying theatre. My wife remained at home in Brisbane working and caring for two children, one 2 and the other 7. She was supportive of my jaunt overseas but ultimately wanted her reward. We agreed to meet in Italy without the kids for two weeks at the end of my study. Thank god for generous grandparents.

We enjoyed a week in Rome, anther few days in Florence and then Venice - the highlight for us. Venice is the capital of the old Venetian Republic and now is part of the Veneto Region in the Province of Treviso which in turn is where my Great grandfather was born arounf 1837/38. I convinced Andrea to take a day trip to Orsago, his supposed birthplace. It was on the trainline. Simple. It was a great day but fruitless in terms of unearthing birth certificates or any church records giving us any new information. The best part of the day was meeting a young girl, Marina Batistuzzi, at the Municipio (Town Hall) who wanted to practice her English and so shut up shop for the rest of the day to accompany us on our search. I've written this visit into the draft of my memoir (see previous blog) and

Here's what I've written:

The trip from Venice north was a short forty-five minutes. We stepped off the train in Orsago to be greeted by a dry and dusty main street. It was June, summer was raging on the northern plains. The 3,900 residents were clearly on siesta. We were on foot with no map, no directions and no language, save good morning and an ability to count to ten – ten words, uno duo tres, which rattled around in my head constantly in some vain attempt to convince myself that I was a native speaker. My mother was a self-confessed counter. She would quite cheerfully tell anyone who wanted to listen, that, not only was she good at English she also loved numbers, to the point of absurdity. She would count out time – in the shower, while drying her hair, peeling carrots. She seemed to think this was normal and I am afraid I may have inherited this quirky aspect of her personality.

Andrea, the pessimist, already doubted the wisdom of spending a precious day on a wild goose chase. I, the optimist, was sure we’d uncover something and, being the eternal pathological version was convinced that the experience would be uplifting in an, as yet, unexpected way. We stepped into the foyer of the Municipio Di Orsago. I recall a white stone building with a large foyer, the type which echoes as you cross the marble floor announcing your presence and in this case sending shivers of anxiety to paralyze my memory where nothing resided beyond numerals.

I hadn’t expected to be proved right so early in our trip, but there behind the counter sat a young woman who was so excited to encounter English speakers with whom she could practice that after a short conversation where ‘buon giorno’ was the only word I needed, she agreed to shut the Municipio for the afternoon and offered to accompany us on our search for Lorenzo. That this was unsuccessful was not the point. The unexpected delight in finding this angel in remote Orsago made the trip worthwhile in itself. We did knock on some priests doors during that afternoon, and in each case they reluctantly agreed to Marina’s request to look at the parish birth records. In each case they were written in long hand in large impressive volumes but without a specific date we were faced with a long and tedious search. Marina was more than happy to drive on a sunny north Italian day and played tour guide as we visited small villages in a game of pin the tail on the donkey. Given that we had so few clues and at that time searching for only one name we were doomed to failure.

Sixteen years later a distant relative, unbeknown to me, also visited Orsago and also made a beeline for the Municipio and also encountered the delightful Marina. As Barry recounts it he approached this young woman, now in her late thirties, and asked for advice regarding his search for records of Lorenzo. As soon as she heard the name she said ‘Oh, there was another man here asking after that name’. Barry was a little shocked as she hurried to the back room and returned with a paper on which was written my contact details. ’Yes’ she confirmed, showing Barry my name as if I had been there the day before, ‘he was also looking for the Capelins”.

So vivid is my memory of that occasion that I still feel a strange connection with Marina 23 years later. I decided to send her an email telling her what I was doing and that i had included her in my book. No response yet but I believe she is still there. I check my in box for her reply each day. Like waiting for a letter from a long lost relative..