Did your grandparents or parents speak Furlan? How did you end up in Australia?
Yeah we sort of did, my mum learnt Furlan off her grandmother and struggled a little bit with communicating when outside of Veneto. When I was young i was fairly fluent and I learnt by ear so I picked up all sorts of it, Furlan and common Italian. (I've forgotten most of it now, I can still understand a bit) Its pretty much just the venetian dialect, I used to work with a Sicilian guy and he may as well have been speaking Spanish.
The great majority of post war immigrants that came to Australia were Southern Italians, Calabrese and Sicilians, those regions probably account for 70 percent of Italian immigration to Australia. In my old job we'd deal with a lot of oldies with dementia, Sam my Sicilian colleague would understand and talk to the southerners but he couldn't understand venetians (they were generally the minority) and I would mostly understand and be able to communicate with Furlan's (of which there is a decent diaspora here, there are two large Furlan clubs in Melbourne) About 5 percent of Victorians have Italian heritage about 370,000 people.
My great grandfather came out here with my great uncle in the 1930s, Australia was at the time one of the richest countries in the world and had some of the highest wages on offer for Stockmen and Jackaroos. They came here to hire out as stockmen and earn greater wages they they could make at home working their own land. Anyway my great grandfather came back before the war but my Zio Joe stayed here (and i think for a short time was interned during the war, mum used to know all this ****) Anyway after the war my grandfather had a job working on the railroads and was involved with the local unions and socialist party, he'd married my grandma and they'd had my aunt. My grandma's younger brother Jack had left pretty much as soon as the war was over and joined Joe out here in Australia, they were both writing home saying how much better life was and they should join them too. At the time Canada and Australia were offering assisted migration my grandparents put in for both, they got a positive reply from Australia first. My grandfather came out in 54? and my pregnant grandmother 3 months later. Between Nonno, Joe and Jack they had enough money working at the tannery for a deposit on the house in Footscray before Nonna got here, they moved into the house on Pilgrim St (I found the original title and bill of sale in my parents papers while looking for their will) and my mum was born shortly after.
I think my great grandmother came out shortly after, her husband had died (I dunno when) so she came out and lived with my Grandparents. She was absolutely furious when she got here and saw how we lived, "My ****ing husband came here saw what indoor plumbing looked like and yet when he came home I was still ******** in an outhouse until he died, that bastard." so on and so forth. When she got to 80 she decided she was going to die and insisted on moving back home to Italy to be buried with her husband. Why you might ask? Anyway the old bat lived another 18 years and missed out on all of her grandkids. (My cousin Claire may have been born, she'd inspire most people to leave the country, well men anyway.)
So that's what I know, I'm sure bits are wrong but mum kept the family lore and she's not around to ask.
en.wikipedia.org
