HERITAGE

Random House Australia - ISBN 9781741665949

Workers are needed for the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme, and the Australian Government's offer resonates throughout Europe. A whole new world is opening up for those whose lives have been destroyed by the ravages of war.

They came from everywhere. Within only months, throughout the mountain work camps and the townships of the Monaro Valley, a cacophony of strange accents and languages confused both the locals and the hundreds of their fellow countrymen who had flocked to the area to work on The Snowy. Even those Australians from the cities, who'd bumped into the odd 'wog' and considered themselves relatively sophisticated, were in a state of confusion. The Europeans outnumbered them, and they were bewildered by the deluge of foreign tongues and the sights and smells of foreign foods. Garlic wafted from the kitchens of the Italians, the Poles and the Czechs ate evil-looking sausages, the Germans downed sauerkraut by the bucket load, and the Norwegians, incomprehensibly, devoured soused herring and pickled rollmops with their beer. The previously cloistered Australians didn't know what to make of it.

….. Twenty year old Pietro Toscanini had arrived in early1954. He'd been bewildered when he'd walked through the gates of Cooma's picturesque railway station to the forecourt overlooking the town below. They'd told him in Sydney that he was going to the Snowy Mountains. But where were the mountains? Where was the snow? He'd anticipated a replica of his native alpine Italy, but all he could see were distant low lying hills surrounding a vast plain, in the centre of which sat a shabby town with makeshift settlements sprawling either side. The heat, too, confused him. It was so hot that he was sweating beneath the fine wool suit he'd purchased before he'd left the home country. It was the only suit he possessed, the latest fashion with tapering collar and trouser legs, and he'd worn it to impress his new employers.

….. The crowd had dispersed until finally there'd been six men left in the station's forecourt, two chatting in Hungarian and the others, of indeterminate nationality, wandering about impatiently. Finally, an Australian in a grubby open-necked shirt, shorts and sandals, who had been lounging against a nearby Land Rover, walked up to them. He was carrying a clipboard.

'G'day. You the blokes for Spring Hill?'

He'd ticked their names off the list and, together with the five other men, Pietro had been piled into the back of the canvas covered Land Rover and driven through the centre of Cooma on his way to the work camp.

Cooma had intrigued Pietro. It was not large, but it was not at all the shabby town it had appeared from the railway station. To the right was a neat, green park where families picnicked and children climbed the railings of the small rotunda in the centre. The main thoroughfare was busy with traffic, the pavements bustled with people milling about awning-fronted shops and, on either side of the broad, dusty boulevard, stood graceful hotels with balconies of ornately laced iron.

Pietro had barely had time to drink it all in before he'd found himself clinging to the Land Rover railings as it bounced its way over rough gravel roads towards the settlement approximately fifty miles from Cooma. The trip would take about an hour and a half, the driver had told them.

'Good day for it,' the taciturn Aussie had remarked, 'takes about four hours in winter when the weather's crook, and sometimes you have to wait until the snow ploughs have been through.' Then he'd lapsed into silence.

The men, a German, a Pole, a Norwegian and the two Hungarians, had chatted jovially during the trip, mostly in passable English, and Pietro had been able to offer nothing more than his name and 'how do you do', a greeting which he had mastered to perfection. The huge, blonde Norwegian had slapped him on the back and said 'you will be right mate,' in a grotesque imitation Aussie accent and the others had laughed.