Not Any Joe Blow

By Anthony Virgara

My father immigrated to Australia in early 1951 to establish a new life for his family, having experienced the ravages of the Mussolini era and the decay of our lifestyle in Italy.

In 1952, as a two-year-old, together with my mother and two older sisters, I departed by ship for Sydney to begin my new life. The early years were hard because I struggled with the desire to fit in, to be accepted into the Aussie culture and then to return home to a strict Italian household.

At school and in society, bullying and verbal abuse were a daily occurrence; however, as a result, I grew stronger and it motivated me to work hard for my future and to prove that with determination, all things are possible.

This book is a true account of what my life as a young migrant boy entailed and my obsessive desire to rise above social criticism and family cultural demands to achieve success through hard work.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley
• Release date: May 10, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463736784

Anthony Virgara

My life was not all drama. I had some wonderful experiences growing up as an independent and often rebellious, angry young boy. Reflecting on my past, I would not change anything. The good and the not so good experiences made me who I am today – a proud Australian of Italian heritage.

Book preview

My life was not all drama. I had some wonderful experiences growing up as an independent and often rebellious, angry young boy. Reflecting on my past, I would not change anything. The good and the not so good experiences made me who I am today – a proud Australian of Italian heritage.

Dedication

I dedicate this book to my wife, June, without whose love and understanding, I would have achieved nothing.

To my children, Martin and Tanya, this is also for you; I have always loved you, and am so proud of your achievements.

To my four grandchildren, I wrote this for you to correct any/every fallacy that you may hear about me in the future.

Finally, to my partner Beverley, thank you for all your love, kindness and support, and understanding now and when times were tough.

Anthony Virgara

Not Any Joe Blow

Copyright © Anthony Virgara (2018)

The right of Anthony Virgara to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781788486828 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781788487597 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781788487603 (E-Book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published (2018)

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd™

25 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5LQ

My name is Joseph Anthony Virgara. I was born on the 6th of October 1949 in Reggio Calabria in Italy, although my passport show that I was born on the 9th October 1949; rest assured, I was born on the 6th.

I am one of six children of which three were born in Italy, and three born in Australia.

Back in Italy, my father’s family were very wealthy and highly educated (we have lawyers, a judge, school teachers, accountants, even a priest in the family) and, basically, they were the gentry of their district. They owned property, farmland, olive groves and other business, most of the people in the town at some time of the year were employed by the family.

During the Second World War, most of the business and wealth my father’s family had was lost gone forever.

Shortly after the end of the Second World War, my father made a decision to emigrate to Australia for us to have a better chance in life.

Dad came out first to see what Australia was like and to get a job and organise a place for us to live, and if everything was OK, he then would send for us.

By good fortune and hard work on Dad’s part, we were sent for in 1952.

Mum and my big sister Connie, my sister Nancy and I made the long journey to Australia; I was all of two and a half years at the time.

We travelled aboard the good ship, Oceania, the journey took four weeks to complete. My mum became very sea sick during the voyage, so my big sister was assigned the task of looking after me (impossible task it turned out to be as they lost me on a number of occasions). They reckoned they nearly always found me in the dining room demanding to be fed.

I know we landed at Circular Quay where Dad was waiting for us, and after greeting us (I think he was very glad to see us), he proceeded to take us to our new home at 133 Norton St, Ashfield.

My first and only recollection of the house was that it had a very long dirt driveway about 50 yards long that went from the front gate right up to the front door of the house.

The land size was enormous; this, I later discovered, was the main reason, together with the house being so far away from the road, that dad purchased this particular house.

Dad was an absolute fantastic gardener and had a good understanding about animals; after all, he was a butcher by trade, and back in Italy, he maintained a very large garden growing all manner of fruit and vegetables for his family.

Our home was surround by seven other homes whose back fences were all around us and on one side we had two tennis courts together with a used car yard that had the slogan: ‘THERE ARE NO ROUND CORNERS ON OUR SQUARE DEALS’. I can remember that on Sundays I would climb over the fence, get in these big old American cars and with my feet barely touching the accelerator, I would move the cars around the yard, sometimes having little accidents; although, never causing any damage as cars in those days all had steel bumper bars. Only God knows what the owner of the caryard must have thought on Monday mornings. Next door to the caryard was a factory that spun cotton, and straddle across a water cannel, we had a factory that made coffins.

I cannot remember much between the age of 3 and five other then we had and I played with chickens, ducks, and a goat. I climbed trees etc.

What I do remember is my first day at school at St Vincent’s Ashfield, there I met a boy named Alan Virgona; we became best friends and from that day onwards, Alan and I became inseparable.

Alan came from a family of five, his mum Olive was Australian, and his dad Philip was Italian; they lived in a council house just up the road from me and we were always together.

By the time I turned five, Mum had my little brother Frank.

To me, life was boring at home. I really had no one to play with, so nearly every day after school, I would bolt up to Alan’s place where we would play all types of games and as I did not have any toys of my own, I was enchanted by Alan’s toys. Besides, Alan’s folks had a television set so ‘I HAD TO GO EVERYDAY’ to keep up with the serials such as The Mickey Mouse Club, Spin and Marty, Rin Tin Tin, etc., etc.

I became friends with the boy next door whose name was Kevin Edwards. His grandmother and pop owned the house with the two tennis courts. His grandparents were fairly strict and they had rules regarding who and when Kevin was allowed to have friends over and for how long he was allowed to play; I really enjoyed going over to Kev’s as he also had a tree house with a rope ladder, and as well as playing tennis and other games such as football (Kevin was very good at rugby league; so good that at school, he represented the school and then went on to play for Western Suburbs).

This was the status quo for the time between six and say ten, at which time I discovered horses.

You see, Dairy Farmers had their milk depot just up the road from my house; milk was, at that time, still being delivered by horse and cart.

One day, the family woke up to find a horse foraging away in Dad’s lettuce patch, that’s when I found out where he had escaped from. That was it; after that, on Sundays, you could/would often find me riding the horses around the square yard. This started a love of horses that is still with me today.

My schooling progress was OK. I passed every year, but unfortunately my little mate Alan failed third class and from then on, Alan was always one class behind me, although this made absolute no difference to our friendship.

By the time I went to big school – fourth class – I could see that I was a little different to most if not all the other boys. Even if it was not really true, it felt like it.

Times were tough at our place by this time; Mum had had two more children, Maryanne and my little sister Josephine. That made a grand total of six children plus Mum and Dad. There were eight of us with just one man working, bringing home a wage.

My poor old dad was a proud man who was very well educated and quite wealthy back in Italy. He got married late in life when he was nearly forty years old, and now found himself in a new country hardly able to speak the language. He had a family to look after so he basically took the first job he was introduced to; that job was a low-paying job as a cleaner in the NSW government railways.

Looking back, I am amazed at how in the world did my two parents raised and fed six children, paid off a house, and sent six children to Catholic school, all on such a mediocre wage.

The above was achieved through collaboration between Mum and Dad.

Mother looked after the inside of the house and Dad looked after all the outside of the house, which included a very large vegetable garden plus the chicken coop.

My father grew every type of vegetable; the only things we had to buy at the greengrocer was fruit, although Dad also had a few fruit trees like fig and mandarin, peach and locusts.

My mother was an excellent seamstress except for our school uniforms; she made all our clothes even our underpants. Mum would go to the fabric shop and buy a roll of fabric and proceed to make dress tops, short and long pants, and about 24 pairs of underpants; the embarrassments stepped in when we had to change into our costumes for swimming. After the first time, I went and brought myself a green costume and a beach towel, by this time I had procured myself a job selling papers after school and on Sunday mornings. For this, I was paid the princely sum of two pounds per week plus tips.

Oh, I forgot to mention that we also made our own bread together with our own tomato sauce, plus our own sausages.

The house was run like a military establishment; Mum had rules and procedures that had to be followed exactly as she outlined. I remember Friday was the day all the sheets were changed; Saturday all the floors were polished; Sunday this or that, everyday something different had/was done, and everyone obeyed the rules – all except me.

At that time, nobody knew or could see that I was a free spirit and, as much as they tried, they could not contain me. Mind you, I received plenty of beltings for behaving that way.

I remember Mum locking me in my room and in ten minutes, I was out of there, out the window and over the back fence up to Alan’s place.

Alan’s place was entirely different to mine. For a start, Alan was allowed to have friends over; we were not allowed to have friends at the house.

At Alan’s, we always had some type of cakes or lollies, plus we played all different types of games. Alan’s place is where I learned to gamble or better still bet on outcomes.

I learned to play ‘closest to the wall’, all types of card games especially a game called ‘euchre’, and as we always played for some kind of coin amount, and I seemed to never have much money, I very quickly learned to play good.

A very fond memory I have of back then was that on every Sunday, Olive and Phil would have their family come over for Sunday lunch and after lunch, they played cards for a few hours; they would play poker for money.

Wow. My eyes lit up and I immediately became hooked; mind you, I was all of about eight years old. They did not play aggressively; just family fun you know. Everybody would put in threepence and you were only allowed to bet no more than two shillings. At the end of the day, someone might win a pound or so and some people might lose six or seven shillings.

I couldn’t wait for Sundays to come, with my tips that I got from Sundays paper run. I was up at Alan’s, busting to invest my hard earned money; after all, one thing I learned very young was that you had to speculate to accumulate.

Speculate to accumulate was something me and Alan believed in intensely. I distinctly remember at about ten years old, Alan and I would ask the owner of the paper shop to pay us our two pounds wages on the Friday after our paper run so we both could go to the trots; the owner did not like to pay us on Friday because if we won, we often did not show up to do the Sunday paper run, but more often than not, he obliged us. After all, we were his best paper boys; especially me, as I would not return to the shop until I had sold all my papers every day.

After we received our wages, we both would go back to Alan’s place to grab something to eat, then it was off to catch the 480 bus to Harold Park – to the trots.

Life went on as normal and beside me getting a belting now and again for not doing chores that were given to me by my father, things like watering the garden, cleaning the chicken coop out, breaking rocks – yes breaking rocks – and bricks that I had been told to do, life for me was fine.

Do you remember me telling you that our home had a driveway about fifty yards long? Well, the driveway was all dirt and Dad wanted to make it a proper driveway and being Italian, wanted it all cemented.

Remember, we were battling, but Dad had a friend who got him some old bricks from homes that were being demolished, and it was my job to break the rocks and bricks up so they could be used instead of blue metal – I smashed a lot of bricks, together with a few fingers and thumbs – but we eventually got there; all this aggregate, together with numerous bags of cement that Dad had gotten as payment for cleaning up and keeping tidy the bays at the hardware store called Travis Jones. I now know what doesn’t kill you, just makes you stronger.

Besides