settler

Italians have literally shaped the landscape through sugarcane plantations. They built up the North and impacted more broadly on the state’s economic, social and cultural fabric and space. At the same time, they have been embroiled in labour and racial debates. Regional and homeland origins have defined the identities and loyalties of Italians. However, from the start, Italianness as a heritage and feeling has infused the Queensland countryside, towns and cities. Tracing the story mirrors several trajectories from colonial to state, and helps define Queensland’s position within the global and transnational movements. Escaping la miseria (poverty) Italians left Europe in search of work. By 1859 some Italians were already working in Queensland building railways, as miners, wood-cutters, sugarcane farmers, and priests (the latter on Stradbroke Island and at Warwick). The largest proportion remained in Ingham in the Hinchinbrook Shire. Their presence from 1891 generated heated debate in parliament and the press about their capacity to assimilate. By 1907, racist rhetoric was being used by the Bulletin newspaper, for instance, to question the racial hygiene of Italians, calling them ‘bucolic’, ‘dull-witted’, ‘primitive’ and ‘impoverished’. Such attacks provide a backdrop to the 1924 Royal Commission into alien labour in north Queensland. The Worker, among other newspapers, complained that the Federal Government was allowing ‘Mediterranean scum’ to invade the sugar planations. Until the 1970s Italians were considered less preferable than British and Northern Europeans in Queensland. In Ingham and across North Queensland, Italians were labelled ‘black’ because of the association of the sugar fields with non-white labour. The economic success of Ingham’s Italian community proved toxic despite the support of local police and many Anglo-Australians. Italians became ‘enemy aliens’ with the 1939 National Security Act, especially when Mussolini declared war in 1940. About 15% of Australia’s Italians were rounded-up for internment, including women and children. What can only be described as a ‘social war’ ensued, led by the Returned Services League. After World War II more Italian families arrived in Queensland. The era of the canecutter was over by 1972. At this time Italianness experienced a renaissance not only in Queensland but across Australia. By the 1970s, Italian names were found in the strata of business, politics and society, and Italian words - spaghetti, pasta, zucchini, pizza, gelato, cappuccino, vino - were integrated into the everyday experience of Queenslanders. Source: www.qhatlas.com.au/content/italians-queensland

she doesn't have much to work with, nice and simple

All I can think of is how much work she has to do!

I love contrast of this photo, and how the light shines through the window and then bounces off of the pitcher on the table.

It is possible that this should more correctly be titled "woman inside a selector's house"


From www.cultureandrecreation.gov.au/articles/australianhistory/:

"In 1861, the NSW government opened up the free selection of Crown land. The Crown Lands Acts 1861 permitted any person to select up to 320 acres on the condition of paying a deposit and living on the land for three years. The Acts also limited the use of Crown lands by Aboriginal people as until this time, pastoral lands were still able to be legitimately used by them.



So, a selector was a person who had taken up that right to land.

I have seen one book about Australian colonial/federation photogrpahy which titles this image

" Inside a selector's house"

that's my auntie

www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/pietown.html?c... Great article with the history of Pie Town inspired by these photographs.

I think this is more like what the Brokeback cowboys would/should have looked: a little more ragged and rugged than Heath and Jake were dressed.

My mother has an unfinished Stetson that she got at Girl Scout camp in 1964, and it now looks a whole lot like that hat. (But it's 45 years old and still wearable!) He does kind of look like Lyle Lovett!

I'd like to be able to place it for you but there are actually two Brown's Mountains that I know of, in N.S.W. One is NW of Nowra; the other NW of Bega, being the route of the Snowy Mountains Highway from the coast to the high country.

trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/163798459# - this pic appeared in the Sydney Mail on 2nd October, 1897 ...accompanying an article on Nimmitabel, near Cooma, in Southern NSW.