Welcome to this beautiful mausoleum and final resting place of Guiseppe and Guiseppina Previte and Pepe and Agata Quagliata. Pina and Agata were sisters and all of them coincidentally grew up in the same town of Catania, Sicily, at the foot of Mt Etna. This is a story of four brave people who left their loved ones to move to the other side of the world to live in a foreign country so different from their own. They worked hard and made sacrifices to give themselves and their family a better future.
Our story starts in the tumultuous 1920’s. Sicily was struggling to process the horrific effects of World War 1. Italians suffered a devastating economic depression with fascism and Mussolini on the rise. Times were very tough and work and money scarce. Guiseppe Previte immigrated out to Australia in 1925 in the hope of finding work and a better life. The 25-year-old settled in Ingham where he did the back breaking work of cutting sugar cane. Guiseppe could see the opportunities that Australia had to offer so he took out Australian Citizenship seven years after his arrival. He then returned to his hometown in Sicily where he fell in love and married 18-year-old Pina. They returned to live and work in the cane fields of Ingham and quickly had two sons.
Before the boys started school, Guiseppe and Pina moved the family to Feluga. They originally shared a cane-cutters barracks before moving into a three roomed, corrugated iron shack on the creek bank of Joe Borgia’s farm. It had a dirt floor that Pina covered with hessian bags sewn together by hand. Most of their furniture was wooden packing cases what served to make beds, tables and cupboards. Kerosene drums were used for sinks. There was no running water, so Guiseppe installed a tank for drinking but carried water in cans from the creek for washing and cleaning.
It was during this time that the Prevites befriended Pepe Quagliata who also came from Catania. Pepe had left Sicily in 1928 as the Mussolini regime attempted to control daily life from industry to culture, regulating the factories and censoring the media. Guiseppe and Pepe became fast friends and worked hard in the paddocks cutting cane. The Prevites decided that Pepe needed a good wife and who better than Pina’s younger sister Agata who was still living in Sicily. Match maker Pina vouched for Pepe’s good character and encouraged her sister Agata to marry him by proxy. This is when two people got married in different countries and have other people standing in for their betrothed. This was not unusual at the time as it was too impractical and expensive to travel back to Italy. Nineteen-year-old Agata migrated out to Australia and arrived by train to Tully during a major flood in 1936. Her new husband, who she had never seen before, met her along with her sister and brother-in-law. They carried her bags over their heads as they walked barefoot through the flooded waters taking her to her new life in Feluga.
The Quagliata’s commenced their married life with Agata raising chickens, ducks, turkeys and cows. She made butter and ricotta cheese and sold any surplus milk and cheeses to their neighbours. When friends once returned to Italy, she sent her peppercorn cheese back to her father so he would know she was doing well. Pepe and Agata were never blessed with children. By now World War 2 had commenced and things proved difficult for Italian migrants when Italy aligned with Germany in 1940. Many Italian men in and around Tully were classified as aliens and interned into prison camps down south for the duration of the war. Luckily Guiseppe and Pepe were spared.
The Prevites now had a daughter and Guiseppe decided to embark on new venture. He travelled to Toowoomba and Warwick in southern Queensland where he attended horse auctions. There he purchased Clydesdale horses and had them transported back to Feluga on the goods train. Guiseppe sold these horses to farmers for pulling the heavy implements they needed to clear their farms. He continued to sell horses for nearly 13 years. They moved to a larger rental on Midgenoo Road which was nearer to the railway line and easier to unload the horses. During the slack season the family would travel to Stanthorpe for the fruit picking season. Pina would make preserves from the fruit to bring back home, along with barrels of wine which they bottled to drink for the next year. Pina was a skilled seamstress and taught many young women in the district to sew, knit, crochet, embroider and appliqué.
The Prevites and Quagliatas bought a cane farm together in 1949 and four years later the Prevites had their fourth child. There was no electricity in the shared house, but they had the luxury of a kerosene fridge, and a well was installed so they no longer had to carry water from the creek. Not long after this electricity was connected to the house.
In the paddock the cane was cut by hand and loaded onto open trucks which were then delivered to the mill by locos. The train rails were laid by hand into individual farms and the trucks pushed along these rails to be loaded. It was during one of these operations that Pepe’s hand was jammed, and he lost part of two fingers. He was also caught in a cane fire and suffered severe burns to his legs.
Pepe Quagliata got a licence and bought a Ford Prefect Ute. The families enjoyed many happy trips to the beach for picnics and camping. Guiseppe, however, never got a licence but preferred horse riding and later took up bicycling. He rode his push bike well into his eighties.
Over the years the Quagliatas made two trips home to Sicily but never wanted to live anywhere else but Feluga. Pepe died on Agata’s birthday in 1985. She then moved to Curtis Street in Tully and lived there until she passed at age 90.
The Prevites went on to buy a cane farm in Smithfield, Cairns, but returned to the Tully in their later years. They were among the first residents of the Tully Nursing Home when it opened in 1988. Guiseppe passed away the next year with the love of his life Pina following just 6 weeks later.
It is fitting that these two couples who shared so much in life are now interned together in a district that meant so much to them all.
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