New Italy had its beginnings in 1880, when poor farming families from the Veneto region in Northern Italy were beguiled by Frenchman, Marquis de Rays, to purchase land in a phantom paradise in the Pacific named La Nouvelle France (an imaginary kingdom east of Papua New Guinea).
317 hopeful immigrants set out on the India but on their arrival they found that there was no promised colony. After enduring 9 months of disease and starvation in the festering tropics, the 217 survivors were eventually brought to Sydney in April 1881. After recovering their health, the families were dispersed around NSW, employed on farms or large estates, while they assimilated and learned the language. Over time the majority reunited and a settlement was established on some of the last land available for selection in northern New South Wales, just south of the Richmond River. In 1882 & 83 twenty-six Italian immigrant families took up a conditional purchase farm of 40 acres and called their sanctuary La Cella Venezia (Venetian Cell). Although the land was not ideal, their industriousness and resourcefulness reaped rewards. They cleared the land, sank wells, built houses, raised livestock and planted fruit trees, vegetables and grape vines.
Most of the men worked on nearby farms, sawmills or cutting cane. They prospered and by the mid-1880s, about 50 holdings of an aggregate area of more than 3,000 acres were under occupation, and the population increased to 250. They officially changed the town name to New Italy when the school was established in 1886 – the strict teacher insisting that the children only spoke in English in the classroom. The settlement was widely accepted by the larger community and people well respected as hard workers. Mulberry tress grew well in the region and there was an attempt at establishing a fledgling silk industry by breeding silkworms. It was quite successful but short-lived due to changes in government and other circumstances.
Over time, several marriages resulted in new families joining the hamlet and the diversity of cultures was embraced. As the children grew up and moved away to forge their own path and as the original settlers passed away, the settlement declined as the population aged. By the 1920s very little was happening at New Italy although it would remain inhabited until 1955.
Today, New Italy boasts a vibrant community centred around the splendid museum and pavilion which superbly depicts the full history of the enterprising Italian settlers.
The article below was written in 1954 by local journalist Diana Mercer from the Ballina Pilot.
It was printed in the Farmer & Settler magazine
New Italy : Richmond’s Almost Forgotten Settlement
By Diana Mercer
Today anyone could drive through the once-thriving township of New Italy and never know it had been there, unless they were sharp-sighted enough to see the modest sign directing travellers to it, about eight miles past Woodburn on the Pacific Highway.
Fifty years ago, however, it was quite a different story.
A wine shop, two stores, a church and a vigorous school stood where now paspalum grows and red cows flourish.
Vineyards flourished, too, citrus orchards, vegetable gardens, maize fields and some 500 people, mostly of Italian parentage, led settled and prosperous lives on the land condemned 50 years earlier as useless and unfit for selection.
Poor it certainly is, compared to the rest of this rich district, but it grew mighty gum trees and it gave a start in life to 30 families who had been through hell for six months and must have been glad merely to stop travelling and put down roots, no matter how poor the soil was reputed to be.
Industrious People
Though New Italy is no longer an entity, it has made a fine contribution to the welfare of the whole district, for its settlers brought a touch of solid industry to a community who might be said to have been spoilt by the bountiful country so quickly available to anyone who could work.
The Italians taught the British to love the soil itself. By their example in the poor land in New Italy they paved the way for much of the soil conservation work that is being done today.
“Gullible Peasants”
Thus some or the finest farms in the Richmond Valley are now owned by the descendants of the Marquis de Ray’s “gullible Italian peasants” (as one early writer described them.)
The Marquis de Ray organised an expedition of settlers to go out to New Ireland in 1879. He offered a free house and provisions for six months and a passage in a vessel sailing from Barcelona, to any settler, for either £75 or six months’ work.
Possibly he counted on more money and fewer workers, or perhaps the whole thing was just another “South Sea Bubble,” but, when the 300 families who embarked on the India, arrived at Port Breton they found no preparations made for their arrival.
For three months they battled with starvation, illness and an unfamiliar climate.
By that time conditions were so bad and deaths so frequent that they had to give up and 200 of them set out again in the India to go to Australia. By this time even the ship was almost derelict and the captain was forced to call into Noumea for repairs, where the ship was condemned by the harbor board as unseaworthy and the expedition was stranded again.
The captain appealed to the French Government of Noumea for help and passages were arranged on the James Paterson, a bill of sale being taken over the India to pay expenses.
Arrival In Sydney
Thus the remnant of the 300 pioneer families arrived in Sydney on April 7, 1881, all their funds gone and most of them ill or suffering from malnutrition.
The then Premier, Sir Henry Parkes, was very keen on immigration as a means of opening up the country, otherwise the Italians might have mingled with the population of Sydney and lost their identity as a band of settlers.
Many of them did take what work they could find. One was Rocco Cominetti, who soon found employment on one of the sailing vessels trading to the Richmond River.
He returned filled with enthusiasm for the country near Woodburn, which, he told his countrymen, reminded him of the vine growing country in Italy.
With the Premier’s help he was able to select 40 acres of this land and soon he had arranged for 30 families of the Marquis De Ray’s expedition to select land in that area.
So began the settlement of New Italy on gum tree country, despised by the settlers who had moved up to the Richmond from the rich Clarence valley and selected the fat, cedar growing flats along the river.
Many pioneering heads must have been shaken at the foolhardy foreigners, settling on this worthless land with nothing growing but useless hardwoods.
However, the hardwoods proved to be not so worthless. For, possibly with Sir Henry Parkes’ help, a contract for hardwood sleepers was obtained from the Melbourne Harbour Trust and mighty loads of sleepers were shipped south in a very short time.
This gave the Italians the ready cash which they must have needed very acutely.
Then the settlers who had laughed at the ignorance of the Italians, had to stop laughing and take off their hats in respect.
Women’s Work
For while the men cut sleepers, the women dug and trenched the newly cleared land as their families had done in Italy for many generations.
In five years the barren hill country was covered with vines. Grapes were sold for 6d. a pound and many gallons of wine were laid down.
Fruit trees flourished and many small industries sprang up. Silk grown in New Italy is still exhibited at the Sydney Technological Museum. Tobacco found a ready sale.
From being almost entirely isolated, the settlement at New Italy came to be visited by all who wanted to buy fruit and vegetables they had never believed would grow in the district.
A church was built, then a school and a hall. By 1887, only seven years after they left their homeland, the settlement at New Italy was a thriving community of 250 people, and for the next 50 years it continued to prosper.
Then diseases struck the vines, fruit fly spoiled the fruit and the younger generation followed the modern trend towards cattle instead of the harder work of small crops.
So today Roders, Nardis, Spinazes, Favas and Barzos farm their great dairy farms and lead the way, in many cases, with modern improvements and scientific care of the soil.
They follow, in a modern way, the example of industrious care of the soil that their grandparents began nearly 80 years ago.
Of New Italy there is little left to see except the beautiful Park of Peace planted by one of the original settlers, Giacomo Piccoli, to mark the 55th birthday of the settlement.
Fifty five trees were planted that day and since then trees have been planted to commemorate any great event, so today a thriving plantation stands as a memorial to the mighty trees that gave the settlement its start.
Mr. Piccoli, the sole survivor of the first settlers, lives quietly among the green hills he helped to clear.
For 20 years he travelled the world, visiting many countries, but he maintains that the district of New Italy is the most beautiful and peaceful place he has ever seen.
