No place like home

Many migrants choose to come to Australia in search of a better life, creating immeasurable opportunities for which their descendants are grateful. By Gemma Tognini.

I love Australia day. Not in a schmaltzy, cosmetic, faux tattoo, disingenuous way.

The 26th of January is a day of remembrance and gratitude for me because it was on that day in 1955 that my late father, then a wide-eyed boy of 10, his seven year old sister and my Nonna arrived in Fremantle aboard a ship called the Australia.

Long before we formally celebrated Australia Day on January 26th, it was a day of huge significance for my family and the hundreds of others who arrived to start their new life in Australia on that day.

I remember asking my Nonna what the first thing she said was, when she saw my Nonno (her husband) Carlo Tognini, for the first time in three years.

“Take me home,” She told me.

When I offered the cautious view that might have been somewhat of a passion killer after three years apart, my magnificent, resilient, ballsy Nonna told me this.

“No, I meant take me to my home. This was my home now, Australia was my home from that moment on and I wanted to see my house. The place I would live. Raise our family. I wanted to see my HOME.”

What an incredible woman she was. They all were. 

For a variety of mundane reasons, one being distance, I grew up very much closer to my father’s family than my mothers, who are all in Brisbane and the ACT.  My mum was born to a middle-class Australian family and grew up in the Brisbane suburb of Graceville.  Her dad, my grandpa Doug was a salesman who fought in New Guinea, coming back a broken man as so many did. Her mum, Frances, raised the kids because that’s what women did. 

I’d heard parts of conversation over the years about some kind of political history on mum’s side of the fence but it was always slightly nebulous and to be honest, I never asked the question.  This Australia Day, my mind turned to these family stories again as they often do, and I sent my mum an innocent enough text asking her to remind me who her Uncle Charlie was, the one who was supposed to be in politics. The same Uncle Charlie who, as I recalled, was supposed to be a peanut farmer from Kingaroy. 

Uncle Charlie went by another name. Mum’s great Uncle Charlie, her grandmother Helena’s brother, was known to most as Sir Charles Frederick Adermann, former Federal Minister for Primary Industry in the Menzies Government. Former deputy speaker. Former deputy leader of the Country Party.  And yes, a bloke who farmed peanuts at Kingaroy in rural Queensland.

Charles was the son of Carl Freiderich Adermann and Emilie Litzow,  migrants from Germany who settled in Wooroolin. 

The things you find out on Australia Day.  

Reading about my great, great Uncle Charlie was fascinating. I’ve always loved history, but this was different. It truly did come alive for me as I peered at the black and white image attached to his biography.  I saw my brother’s eyes in his. Shades of his signature smirk. The fact that he served in the Menzies Government, one of the most significant in Australia’s history, feels quite surreal. A connection, through generations, that needs more exploring on my part, but brings me back to that place of gratitude for this magnificent country and the opportunities it gave to those who took a punt and left their old lives behind.

Like Carlo Tognini and Pina Sondrini, Carl Freidrich Ademann and Emilie Lovitz came to Australia for a better life. And here I am generations later grateful to my bones.

Gemma Tognini is Executive Director of GT Communications.