Family photograph of past lives and future portents
The Ferry Royal Commission and the visit of De Pinedo, Innisfail, 1925
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/qre.26412Keywords:
Ferry Royal Commission, Francesco di Pinedo, immigration, Italian internment in Australia, Italian migrants, North Queensland, sugar industryAbstract
Capturing an important day in the life of a community, a photograph from the author’s family collection records a group that has gathered to welcome the Italian aviator Francesco De Pinedo to Innisfail in 1925. De Pinedo’s record-breaking 55,000-kilometre flight from Rome to Tokyo via Australia and back was an extraordinary feat, and a demonstration of Italian technological advancement and participation in the drive towards global connectivity of those times. He had been feted by the public and dignitaries, including the Prime Minister, at each stage of his journey around Australia. But the photograph reveals much more. De Pinedo’s visit was particularly welcome where Italians were denigrated and viewed with suspicion. At the time, there was unrest about the impact of ‘foreign’ – specifically Italian – immigration in North Queensland, to provide labour for its sugar industry. The men in the photograph were among the leaders of the North Queensland Italian communities, and three of them had been invited as witnesses before the Ferry Royal Commission just months earlier. The Commission was set up to investigate attitudes towards the increasing numbers of Italians, and those views were to result in widespread internment of North Queensland Italians during World War II. All but two of the Italian leaders photographed were interned. This article situates the personal histories and contributions of these individuals within their historical circumstances.
References
Thomas Arthur Ferry, ‘Report of the Royal Commission appointed to Inquire into and Report on the Social and Economic Effect of Increase in Number of Aliens in North Queensland’, Brisbane, 4 June 1925. Available from: http://www.multiculturalaustralia.edu.au/doc/alien_report.pdf [December 2022].
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William A. Douglass, From Italy to Ingham: Italians in North Queensland (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1995). See pp. 307–10 for the wording of the contract signed by the Jumna pioneers.
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Ferrando Galassi, Sotto la Croce del Sud – Under the Southern Cross: The Jumna Immigrants of 1891 (Townsville: James Cook University, 1991), pp. 75–116.
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See, for example, ‘Peaceful invasion: Italians in Queensland – displacing Australians’, The Sun, [Sydney],
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See the biographical note on Ferruccio Guerra in Ilma Martinuzzi O’Brien (ed.), The internment diaries of Mario Sardi (Alphington: Lucerne Press, 2013), p. 108. Francesco Fantin was photographed on the verandah of the club in 1927; the photograph is in Ilma Martinuzzi O’Brien, Australia’s Italians, 1788–1988 (Melbourne: State Library of Victoria, 1986), pp. 80–1.
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This terminology and analysis were developed in Charles A. Price, Southern Europeans in Australia (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1963).
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For discussion of the reports on De Pinedo’s visit in the Australian press, including the Italo-Australian newspaper, see Christopher Lee and Claire Kennedy, ‘Race, technological modernity, and the Italo-Australian condition: Francesco De Pinedo’s 1925 flight from Europe to Australia’, Modern Italy 25(3) (2020), 251–3. https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2020.17.
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Interview with Basil Pavan and Alfred Martinuzzi, by Ilma Martinuzzi O’Brien and Lynn Callegari, El Arish (QLD), 26 January 1986. Lucy Davanzo, later Lucy Arcidiacono, was born in the Ingham area, and her mother and father had arrived on the Jumna in 1891.
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Details of all internments can be found in the Service and Casualty Forms, held online under individuals’ names in the National Archives of Australia (NAA): MP1103/1 and MP1103/2.
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Prisoner of War/Internee; Capra, Celestino Natale Enrico; Year of birth – 1893; Nationality – Italian naturalised, NAA: MP1103/2, Q7369; Capra, Celestino Natale Enrico – Queensland investigation case file, NAA: BP242/1, Q24027.
Guerra’s experience in Loveday internment camp is outlined in Martinuzzi O’Brien (ed.), The internment diaries of Mario Sardi, pp. 107–8.
Advisory Committee Hearing, Dalla-Vecchia, Carlo – Queensland internee, NAA: BP242/1, Q13647.
Martinuzzi O’Brien, ‘Italians in Ingham and Innisfail’, 88–9.
Martinuzzi O’Brien (ed.), The Internment diaries of Mario Sardi, pp. 107–8.
Martinuzzi O’Brien, ‘Italians in Ingham and Innisfail’, 88–9.
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Martinuzzi, Alfred, NAA: MP1103/1.
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Alfred Martinuzzi, Advisory Committee Hearing Transcript, Martinuzzi, Alfred Louis – Queensland investigation case file, NAA: BP242/1, Q24803.
Alfred Martinuzzi, Advisory Committee Report, 14 August 1942, Martinuzzi, Alfred Louis – Queensland investigation case file, NAA: BP242/1, Q24803.
W. B. Simpson, 18 August 1943, Martinuzzi, Alfred Louis – Queensland investigation case file, NAA: BP242/1, Q24803.
A. L. Hird, ‘Report of Carroll, Allied Works Council’, 3 October 1943, and ‘Report 26 October 1943, Ref D69/4’, Martinuzzi, Alfred, Advisory Committee Papers, Martinuzzi, Alfred Louis – Queensland investigation case file, NAA: BP242/1, Q24803.
R. F. M. Clark for Chief of Air Staff to Director General of Security Queensland, 17 November 1944, Martinuzzi, Alfred Louis – Queensland investigation case file, NAA: BP242/1, Q24803.
The Herbert River Express, 5 April 1947; Martinuzzi O’Brien, ‘Cantamessa, Giuseppe Ettore (1892–1947)’, pp. 363–4.
