Part 2 – Il grande viaggio 1975… 50 years since Nanna Francesca and Nonno Anni took their ‘big trip’ overseas.
For this instalment, one photograph stands out – when Nonno Anni returns to Fossa more than three decades after emigrating to Australia. I wrote about this in Joe’s Fruit Shop and Milk Bar, in the chapter ‘Orange Drink – 6d’ and looking at this photograph again now, it takes me right back to sitting at the kitchen table when Nonno Anni handed me this picture and spoke of returning to his beloved Fossa for that first time. I can still smell the brewed coffee, feel the biscuit crumbs on the tablecloth, and see the tears in his eyes…
‘It seemed the entire village came out into the street when we arrived in Fossa,’ Nonno Anni shakes his head, marvelling. And having stood in that lane, I can almost hear the clunking open of shutters and doors, footsteps on stone.
He shows me a photograph of the return – Nonno Anni in his travelling suit, kneeling on the cobblestones surrounded by dozens of villagers clustered around him, many reaching out with a hand on his shoulders, his arms, his back. The emotion in his face is pure. They never forgot him, enveloping him back into their village family. Several decades of poverty, migration, and the war had forever split an entire village. A period short in historical terms but long for those living through it, and everlasting in that there would forever be those who went beyond the mountains and those who stayed encircled by them.
The younger people in the photograph must’ve been thinking, ‘who are these people?’ but it’s clear the older people knew. It’s lovely how they embraced Nanna Francesca also, though she wasn’t from Fossa or Abruzzo. Of course, she too was very keen to see her family house again in Calabria, but that is in the next part of their travels… Buon Viaggio! 💛🌠
“Ricordo del 26 July 1950 sulla spiaggia di Palmi – Memory of 26 July 1950 on the beach of Palmi…”
“On Boxing Day, Annibale, Francesca and the others loaded the back of the Chevrolet with cold drinks, some roast chickens and a couple of large watermelons. After several years of keeping the fruit shop and milk bar open almost every day, Annibale had decided they’d close for a couple of days over Christmas and the family would head to the beach for the day…
The Italian ship, ‘Remo’, which is linked to four generations of my family… my great-grandfather, Vitale arrived in Australia for the second time aboard it in 1932, my grandfather, Annibale sailed from Italy in it when he was just 15 in 1939, my father was named after it, and my nephew shares with it his second name.
Zoë Boccabella 