Family Men
- Joanne Tapiolas
- Apr 5
- 1 min read
Italians by heritage and tradition are family men. They are part of extended families: brothers, sons, husbands, nephews, cousins and fathers.
Internment was difficult for the men and even more so because of the physical distance between the UK, Italy and Australia. This resulted in letters taking longer to be received and unpreparedness to travel by sea to return to UK. The tyranny of distance added and additional frustration: while friends and family members were being released in 1941 and 1942 from internment on the Isle of Man, they were 'stuck' in Australia with a feeling that they had been forgotten.
Some of the Dunera Italians had family living in German occupied Italy, others had family living through the ceaseless German bombings across England, one man's son had fought with the British in Libya and was held in Italy as a prisoner of war while others had arrived in Australia without knowledge of whether their close relatives had survived the sinking on the Arandora Star or not.
The photographic collection are from the Mariutto family album. They are photos from before Pietro's internment. It would be four years four and a half months before Pietro returned to his family. His girls were now young women and he would never get back those 'lost family years'.
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