One of our neighbours in Box Hill sold me his old Chevrolet ‘Al Capone’ style car for five pounds. Plus he gave me another wrecked Chevy for spare parts. It was running alright and I started it with a crank handle to get it going. My Chevy became very handy for me to go to the station at five in the morning and carry home the groceries. Tina was close to having our first baby. A month later our daughter Silvana was born, a beautiful healthy baby which changed our lives, especially with Tina fussing over her so much!

Michael came to work at the station too. He bought a small motor bike to travel back and forth from his house in Box Hill. But he was not happy living so far out from the city and away from the many friends who he liked to play cards with. His brother Dominic moved in with him for a couple weeks so he could paint a house he had bought in Richmond. Eventually a few months later Michael and his family sold their house and moved away from our little Box Hill community and into Dominic’s new house. I felt really let down by this. Soon my wife didn’t like Box Hill any more because her sister was gone, and she started winging and nagging me to sell up. I would never be able to keep building houses on my wage, so I applied for a loan at the bank. I was told that first I had to get the house to lockup stage, which meant I had to complete the house outside with doors, windows, roof and all. This obstacle quickly put an end to our dream.

Silvana was more then two years old now and very pretty giving us lots of joy. Anne liked playing with her a lot, not being able to have a baby of her own, and later they decided to adopt one. Tina fell pregnant again and pretty soon we would have two children in the family.

My brother Dominic came from the farm to pick up his wife and three boys and move them to Robinvale where he had bought seventy acres of vacant land for a grape farm.

My job at the railway station was going quite well. I was learning the type of work that I would never have imagined over in Italy, like issuing tickets, sending parcels, calling all the passengers on board before the train left the station. I was making lots of friends too. I got to know Michael, an Australian living near our house whose wife became the Godparents of our first son Frank, our very gentle and friendly baby boy.

Usually when I was at the station on duty at the gates as a train arrived, I had to announce on the loud speaker the name of the station, then as quickly as possible close the gate to let the train go. There was this guy who was always late and got upset when he found the gate closed. One morning he was late as usual and told me off shouting “Why don’t you go back to Germany!”

The day that our son Frank arrived at Box Hill Hospital, the Station Master gave me a glass of champagne and congratulated me saying “Best of luck Sam for your baby son!” Two months later with compare Michael and his wife we christened Frank at the church nearby.

Back at our Box Hill home I had laid down the foundations of the building but without the loan there was no way that we could go ahead and finish the house. Without her sister living next door Tina was getting more restless and her true character was starting to show. Fortunately Anne and Tom were next door and this helped a lot, especially when I was on duty at the station until the last train at 1am in the morning.

I took two weeks off from work and we decided to go for a trip in my Chevy to Robinvale to visit my brother Dominic. But I was nervous about the car making such a long journey—five hundred kilometres! Slowly we got there, arriving at around 17. 00 hours in the afternoon. Right up to Swan hill we drove on a proper bitumen road but after that it was gravel and very rough going for the old car.

About thirty-five kilometres from Robinvale we saw a detour sign because the Murray River had flooded again and water had cut the road. We lost more than an hour on the detour just to get back onto the original road, but eventually we arrived at the farm.

My brother had worked hard to keep the family fed and to clear his land for the vineyard. He’s bought a draught-horse which he used to plough the soil for planting and for pulling a cart full of timber posts from the bush nearby. He often worked until very late at night trying to get his vineyard established.

As I said before, living on their farms next door were Sam Tropea and Sam’s brother Joe. The Zaffina brothers had land opposite, just over the road. They had dug a channel to bring the water from the river to all the properties with a water pump. Luigi Zaffina married my cousin Lina. She too would soon be coming from Italy to join him on the land. On this occasion I borrowed Dominic’s shotgun and went hunting for some rabbits in the bush. They had bred by the hundreds all over.

We stayed with Dominic for few days then slowly we headed back for the big city driving thirty miles an hour, the fastest the old Chevy could go. We stayed living at Box Hill for another six months before coming to the conclusion it would be better to sell and go and live in Brunswick in a rented house near some half-related paseani.

I kept working at Box hill station for a while longer but now it was too far away for me so I tried my luck renting a grocery shop nearby. I thought all I’d have to do is stock the shelves and start in a small way to live on the profits. At the railway I gave notice to and started another chapter as a grocery shopkeeper. I would try anything. But soon enough I found out that to save a couple pennies people would walk a kilometre to the supermarket. Silvana was now about six years old and Frank four and when they came with their mother to the shop they would pinch my lollies. I was going nowhere with the grocery shop. My wife was always busy with the kids and could not help in any way, while the big supermarkets were cutting the prices there was nothing left to live on. That was when my brother told me about a shop with living quarters at the back for sale in the Robinvale shopping centre. I though it would be different, lots of Italians there and with a continental grocery shop I could make a fortune and live near my brother at the same time. We could live in the back and my wife could help me run the shop too. Maybe even Silvana could help now.

I secured the shop-top in Robinvale and six months later I was able to travel there to paint and fix the place up. I was ready to try my luck again. But this project was a mistake too, because without business capital to start out with and a family to support, it made it almost impossible to continue. The customers I had banked on – the farmers – could only pay me their grocery tabs at the end of the year when they sold their grapes. So, to live from day-to-day I had to go picking grapes, and get whatever work I could get in a country town.

One day I heard about a job at the pump station, a building near the river with steam pumps to draw water to irrigate the vineyards. The job involved throwing logs into a furnace to keep the steam engines going twenty-four hours a day in a shift of eight hours. When I applied for the job the foreman told me that because I had been involved in a fight the night before in the Euston Pub he couldn’t give it to me. Luckily an old friend of mine Costantino was working there and clarified with the foreman that it was a case mistaken identity. So I got the job. It was the worst job I had ever had in my whole life, but I knew I wouldn’t be there very long and that in a country town people have to take any kind of work in order to survive.

Theresa fell pregnant again and nine months later another lovely baby daughter, who we named Yolanda, came into the world. She was a joy to cuddle and love and made me forget my pains and worries. We stayed in Robinvale for about three years and it wasn’t so bad after all. Working here and there we survived and we always had plenty of food on our table. We couldn’t do anything with the shop now as it was up for sale and waiting for a new owner.

As I had predicted I did not stay long at the pump station and found a job at a packing shed, packing dried sultana grapes into boxes on an assembly line. Then winter came and I went pruning grapevines with the Costantinos who had by now had established themselves very well.

Opposite our house a guy made concrete slabs for the shopping centre footpaths and he gave me work for a while.

For few months I also worked in the Euston bush, where my brother had his farm. We would dig boulders and rocks out of the ground and load them into a huge crushing machine before they came out as small pebbles to be used on the roads. I was young and healthy and I didn’t mind the hard work, but eventually we sold the place and went back to Melbourne to live in a rented house in Richmond, not very far from Theresa’s sister until we could buy a house of our own.

I started looking for work in the orthopaedic field where I had some experience which I’d gained working with my old friend Tom. I got an interview at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, and while I was waiting to hear back from them, I was lucky enough to get another interview at R.A.L.A.C (which stands for Repatriation Artificial Limb and Appliances Centre). The manager Mr. Trencher, asked me many questions and gave me the required tests, then gave me a temporary position “just to see how I would go” he said. Although I didn’t know it then, this job was to become the best job I would ever have in my life.

Two years after starting at R.A.L.A.C Mr. Trencher was sure of my capabilities and I was put on a superannuation scheme. For the first time in my life I had a chance to build a secure nest-egg for myself and my family after retirement which I hoped would be at the age of around sixty-five. I worked at R.A.L.A.C for more than twenty-seven years. In that time I drastically improved my orthopaedic skills and my English language; I made some treasured Australian friends, was promoted to a senior position and helped so many disabled people.

In the year 1958 I bought a small house in Young Street, Fitzroy, for three thousand pounds and after a few renovations it was nice and cosy for a small family. I have to mention that I sold the old Chevy that had served us so well and bought a more modern English car which didn’t stand out quite so much on the road. Three years later I got rid of this one too, trading it in for a newer model Austin. I always kept the cars I owned cleaned and serviced in order to give my family the pleasure of a comfortable car to travel about in at home and further a-field.

Soon our second son, a bright little boy Vince was born, so I now had two sons and two daughters. Silvana by now was about ten years old and was helping her mother quite a bit. A few months later we christened Vince at the very old little Catholic Church in Fitzroy. Vince’s Godmother was an Italian lady; a neighbour whose daughter had became very friendly with Julie.

We were settling into a normal life. On weekends I would use the opportunity to take my family for a trip to the beach, to a Park or a garden. I would often take my family to the parks at Broadmeadows and Sunbury. They reminded me so much of Italy. Tina was looking after the family very well and we were our children were growing up healthy.

I really loved my job and it became more interesting as I learned in depth about the orthopaedic profession, so I was improving my skills all the time. I was going again to evening English classes run by the Australian government to improve my language skills. My responsibilities on the job increased because the senior in charge of our section was giving me more and more difficult work while the easier jobs were going to the old Australian guys. I was serving patients directly from start to finish and eventually this was giving me more experience over the others. This created some resentment among them, particularly when the senior was off sick and I carried his duties and got higher pay. Soon enough they went to complain to the manager and at the branch office. As a result of my Australian co-worker’s complaints I lost out for a while. The manager would leave me to do the harder and more complex work but we all got paid the same salary. Some Australians resented us migrants in so many ways making harder for us to get ahead. But I did not mind all this very much because I knew in my heart that sooner or later I was going to get an official promotion when the time was ripe.

In this period a guy from Germany, Gunter Kroll, a very experienced Orthotist started at R.A.L.A.C and quickly became foreman after a couple years. Later he helped me a lot with my problems, resolving issues with my colleagues.

We lived in Young Street for about seven years and now it was getting too small for the family so I started looking for another house. We liked this two storey solid brick attached house in Kensington on the outskirts of north Melbourne. They called this a Victorian type house with high ceilings in all the rooms. From the upstairs balcony the whole of the centre of the big city could be seen. Plus it was only about ten minutes walk to the shopping centre and the railways station, which was very handy for me to go to work.

The only snag was the railway line passing below and a wheat depot with lots of wagons being loaded up which made it noisy. As well as that there were thousand of birds hanging round shitting everywhere. There was no garage, and the toilet was outside at the back of the building. But to us, it did look very impressive and we bought it for ten thousand dollars. (Sorry, I forgot to mention that by now Australia had changed to the metric system – from pounds sterling to decimal dollars, metres, kilograms, and litres with the rest of the world).

I had to wash the car all the time now because the birds in the trees were shitting all over it, making a real mess.

We rented the Fitzroy house out for a while, but we were unlucky with an Australian family who moved in. They made a mess of the place and had car parts in the back yard that attracted the Police a few times. Finally the council told us to demolish the house or else they would do it at our cost. Silvana and Julie were working at the Motor Registration branch in Carlton so they helped with some extra money taking some of the burden off my shoulders.

It was at this time that a young man of Sicilian origin living nearby started courting Silvana. My younger daughter Julie was also being courted by a young man whom she meet at work called Toni Fabris. His parents were friendly and quiet people from the north of Italy. Frank was a young man now and liked studying.  My wife being brought up in the traditional Italian way did not like these goings-on of the girls so more problems came into the home to make things harder. Theresa soon made friends with some Italian neighbours and things started to settle down a little.

Everything was going so well for our children and they were growing up so quickly. Frank started his first year of secondary school attending Footscray High.

Silvana decided to ‘tie-the-knot’ with her boyfriend so we helped organise her wedding, and a few months later she was married – the first in the family. ‘Silv’ looked so radiant and beautiful on her big day, and we were so proud of her. The happy couple moved into a new residential estate in St Albans, west of Melbourne. Unfortunately, like most of life’s unpredictability, things took a turn for the worse for Silvana’s marriage. Her husband had alcoholic and gambling problems and he fell into a pattern mistreating her over the years. After ten years of tolerating her husband’s behaviour, and trying to hold her marriage together for her children’s sake, Silvana finally divorced him. She still lives in St Albans happily with her two sons.

Eventually we sold our house Fitzroy property as an empty block of land to an adjoining factory site owner. Unfortunately, we didn’t get the amount of money we’d hoped for, but we were still doing alright.

Frank learned how to drive, and after his Learner’s Permit test got his license. He took on some driving work in the evenings for some pocket money to help save for his studies. Julie and Toni were in love and spending a lot of time together, which made us worry, especially when she came home late at night after a date. Tina did most of the worrying about our girls and often upset me too, always imagining the worst. But Toni was a good man—serious and sober.