Page 92 - Bulletin 7 2003

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By the mid-1930s the Italian community who fished had shrunk to a handful and
these men were all getting on in years. One old chap became busy mending nets and

making crayfish nets. Another chap spent his time splitting cane for tying small fish
into bundles, and so forth. Others just spent time at the fish market seeing what was

going on.

In retrospect I do not think they were a close community. Sectionalism played a large

part in their lives. The northerners, the lower middles, and the southern Italians, and
also the Sicilians, were all separate entities almost all with their own ways of life.

The women were all servile – keeping house, looking after children, and having more
children. Very little social life existed for the work was hard and time was limited.

On national days they did come together only because it was expected. As an

example, in the area where we stayed there were about seven or eight families and I
do not recall one occasion when anybody visited, even though they all came from the

same village in Italy.

An example: my father’s boat was wrecked in the basin. It would appear the mooring

ropes were cut or just frayed away. The boat drifted onto the rocks and before my
dad heard of this she was hard and fast. He went around to his colleagues to get them

to help pull the boat off before it was damaged. Nobody was prepared to help. He
and a coloured crewman stayed at the site and waited for the tide to rise and they

then tried to push the vessel off, but to no avail. The boat stayed there and got

pounded on the rocks and broke up. This was where my father damaged his heart and
it was the end of his working days. What a sad day for him. This reflects what I said

earlier about the fishermen’s attitude towards each other.

The Introna Family

My father, Ila Rione Introna, was born in 1879 in the small village of Molfetta, near

the port of Bari on the Adriatic coast of Italy. (Fig. 3.6). Fishing was the only
livelihood for people there, which explains why so many left to seek a living

elsewhere. His early life was spent in sailing vessels. I believe he circumnavigated