Qualla: History of New Italy, New South Wales

History of New Italy, New South Wales: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Maksym Kozlenko, CC BY-SA 4.0. They had been promised paradise and given a death trap. In 1880, poor farming families from the Veneto region of northern Italy sold what little they had and sailed for a Pacific colony called La Nouvelle France, conjured by a French aristocrat, the Marquis de Rays, who had never set foot there. The land he sold them - on New Ireland, near New Guinea - was uninhabitable. Dozens died of disease and starvation before the survivors were carried, half-broken, to Sydney. What happened next is one of the most quietly remarkable immigrant stories in Australia: turned loose with nothing, these families found a patch of poor scrub on the road between the Clarence and Richmond rivers, and on it built a settlement they called New Italy.

Image: Maksym Kozlenko | CC BY-SA 4.0

History of New Italy, New South Wales: The Swindle

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter Ellis at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Marquis de Rays never sailed with his colonists. From Europe he advertised a paradise in the western Pacific - East New Guinea, New Britain, New Ireland - to be called La Nouvelle France, with its capital at Port Breton. Word reached the Veneto through an agent in Milan, and ...

Image: Peter Ellis at English Wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

History of New Italy, New South Wales: The Long Way to Sydney

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tentotwo, CC BY-SA 3.0. The survivors aboard the ship India were eventually carried to Noumea in New Caledonia, where the colony's officials offered them shelter, rations and gifts. The Italians refused to leave the ship. They wanted Sydney, and they would not be turned aside. A deputation reached the B...

Image: Tentotwo | CC BY-SA 3.0

History of New Italy, New South Wales: The Venetian Cell

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter Ellis at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. Parkes wanted the families scattered across the colony to learn English and assimilate. They refused to be parted. In 1882 one of them, Rocco Caminotti, found land still open for selection in the northern rivers district and realised it might let them stay together. The first sev...

Image: Peter Ellis at English Wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

History of New Italy, New South Wales: Silk, Wine and Stubborn Hope

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter Ellis at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. The scrub was poor and the water scarce, so the settlers improvised. They cut timber, worked the district's cane fields, and made wine that drew crowds to Louie Antoniolli's shop on Saturday afternoons for singing and dancing on the lawn. When the government floated silk-making -...

Image: Peter Ellis at English Wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0