Forum member hits the big screen ...
 

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I'm looking my best in that photo, quite the specimen if I say so myself - ethnic Cav :afro

If it's baroque, then don't fix it!

In more serious note, anyone of Mediterranean heritage in Melbourne or VIC, it's a local migrant success story which has a very sad undertone to it. Certainly worth a watch for those of us with that heritage or even just someone who admires someone with a great character and whose put in the hard yards.

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So which part of it does the drugs show up?

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Lies and slander! :lol

It does get brought up, but it doesn't go down well.

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Norta Melbun and a Footsycray

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aTO6Iv4f3A

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what did franco cozzo when he got grey paint on his shoe? eh my footscray...

anyway being of greek background, my family knew all sorts of local business creators around, coburg, brunswick, preston that were successful in what they did.

my dads godfather founded negrita greek/turkish coffee back in the early 60s.

there is always jealousy, rumors etc... on how people got started, and people want to smear their name, kinda like tall poppy syndrome.

anyway franco cozzo is the most famous of all and was a good friend to ethnic communities!

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here here ThaFlash.....
As we all know there is good and bad in any nationality BUT going back the good ol Aussie days the word that is not suitable anymore "WOGS" contributed to this place like mad !
Yes I'm biased coming from Italian parents as well and I LOVE it and being Aussie.
What a great time in this country compared to todays world.
FORZA FRANCO agguri to all.

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My best mate is a 'Western Oriental Gentleman' as he calls himself. :) :)

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Own up.... has anyone else previously PMed forum franco to ask if it he is the real deal? :yelrotflm :merry

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IME people of that generation don't generally have such good typing skills or pay attention to typing out full sentences, it's usually heavily abbreviated and with bad grammar.
Being from QLD I hadn't heard of him but Franco if you're one and the same then good on you, what a story you have. :merry

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:lol
oh so they were ahead of the times as usual being young gen abbreviated sms grammer thrown out the door speak of today :)

our Franco is not the one in the article but like all us wogs, related hehe....

Good one LG17 I like.

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I was very disappointed to find out its not him. I tried to continue pretending but it doesn't work.



Turns out, HE's a FRAUD! :lol

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hehehe now that i think about and to this my mum has her wog room with marble side tables, pillars like the parthernon, nude statues etc.. that me and bro broke playing footy in the house

no one was/is allowed in the wog room btw

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What I imagine Franco driving (Captain Nemo’s automobile ):
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kWnoku2C9...-lifestyle.jpg

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I was gutted. Really wanted my 5 minutes of fame with the "real" Franco.

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I've (unfortunately :)) met 'our' Franco a few times, he's about 90 years younger than the famous one :)

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I'd like to think the vast majority of those migrants were all success stories, granted some had greater success than others.

My Italian Grandparents travelled from a town or province (I believe town) called Fiume to Melbourne in 1949 or 1950. This area had always been disputed territory between Italy, Austria and Yugoslavia. Shortly after they left it became Yugoslavian territory and when they returned 20 years later it was on a Yugoslavian passport.

During the war he was "forced" to work for the Nazis where they taught him how to be a mechanic. I am told he was an extremely talented jack of all trades, but his main trade was as a mechanic. Worked as a diesel mechanic in his later years for the City of Foot-es-cray. As I understand it he fell out of a truck he was repairing, which ended his working life and later caused his death.

2ish years after moving here they bought land in South Kingsville where he put his talents to work built a house. He spent many years working on the Snowy Mountains Project.

He loved working on and restoring cars, particularly Fiats, but apparently had a love for big wagons. Seen lots of pictures of various Ranch wagons he owned. He needed these cars to tow the caravans he built, in various sizes from big to fu*ken huge. And the boats he built. "Things" with big V8's, jet propulsion, wooden hulls, fibreglass hulls or plywood wrapped with fibreglass. Whatever was big and got him out to the snapper grounds quickly.

When he found out Mum was pregnant with me, apparently the second thing (after crying and celebrating) he did was go buy a block of land at Portarlington where built a holiday house. Somewhere he could retire to later and take his grandkid fishing.

Unfortunately he died when I was 3 and never fully go to relax and enjoy everything he worked hard for and built.

After Mum passed about 18 months ago we found various things that were hidden in boxes. Good luck trinkets from his family before leaving Italy. Passports and such. And books like this.

https://i.imgur.com/2duNMtm.jpg

Some sort of a migrant travel loan repayment book. This one was for when they paid to bring his mother in-law and sisters out to Australia, after he settled and had Mum. Apparently they had something similar when migrated to Australia, which I'm yet to find.

Somewhere in another box that I will get to I will find the woollen blankets provided by the ship on their voyage here. They were told to keep them as the shipping company didn't want them back. I'm guessing they were worried about catching something. :yelrotflm

I'm still hoping to find his framed fork and spoon, I know its there somewhere. Given to him by the Nazis while he worked and lived in their camp. The only one he was ever given and if lost would have to eat with his fingers.

Incidentally they also "lost" their family name on arrival in Australia. Customs recorded their name incorrectly on arrival, whether it was a language barrier or hard to understand writing, so they became someone new... And as far as I know are the only family in Australia to have that name. Whereas all their old paperwork and passports back overseas contain a different name or spelling of.

To me a pretty great success story. Even greater when you consider their success was what bought me into the world, which is cause for celebration in itself! :notworthy

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The real deal is usually always at his Footscray store if you want to meet and greet :lol

That's around the same time my grandparents come to Australia from Italy, 1949 and 1953 - part of the post WWII migrant intake, they both wanted to go to the USA but they refused to take any Italian migrants in after WWII so thats why they all came to Australia (and 75% of all Italian migrants settled in Melbourne for some reason lol)

Nonno was conscripted into the military during WWII, then ended up a slave laborer in a Nazi camp when the Nazi's offered him that he could either fight with them or go to the camp, so he took the camp :lol

Towards the end of WWII Americans liberated his camp and basically they just walked their way back home, took him and the others three months to walk from Berlin to Treviso in Italy where he lived.

They met here in Melbourne - there's some funny records in the archives and same with birthdays because the migrants didn't speak English and the people processing them just guessed :lol

Nonno's brothers all became concreters and he opened a shoe repair business in Fitzroy :lol

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Dad's 76, came out here from England sometime around the late 60's or early 70's, and he always made the point, that for all the jokes about the central europeans and wogs, they were some of the best people he'd ever met, and the most deserving of the benefits of immigrating to Australia

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Which was a little strange because I understand my grandparents landed in Sydney. From there they were put into some sort of mass immigration housing. Dad tells me they were big tin sheds, similar to the old Airforce buildings in Ashley St Braybrook.

They were given a time limit to decide what they were doing next. Can only assume they felt Melbourne had the most opportunity so got on a train to there. Maybe they had other family there or it was a group of friends decision. Some sort of safety in numbers/community help thing, because I know everyone settled in the same area.

When his family was bought out they landed in Sydney also, but got straight on a train for Melbourne.

I don't believe my grandfather ever served. He was 12/13 when the war broke out. But the Nazi's saw some use for him later on and he was given the same offer. Fight with them or go to a camp. He picked the camp where they gave him a hell of a mechanics apprenticeship. :yelrotflm

That's why we can't seem to find record of their arrival in Australia. I believe their surname was originally spelt Yedretic. But it was written down by customs as Jedretich, which is how they were known from then on. But their Yugo passports are written as Jedretić. Seen 2 other spellings along the line as well.

Strangely they didn't have a big family like alot of Italians. They had Mum in 1952 and then her brother 12 years later. And even though they all had very much Italian and some Slavic features my uncle is a 6'2" blond haired blue eyed stick. Some recessive gene from somewhere back in history and nothing to do with the milkman or postie. :yelrotflm

Mum was an absolute secretive pain in the a$$ about anything and everything her whole life. Trying to get any information from her was like pulling teeth x 10. So I never got to know much about my family history, most of it comes from Dad's memories for conversations with her father.

Mum was diagnosed with Pancreatic cancer at the end of last April. 3 and a bit weeks after that her Oncologist came and told us her liver was failing and she had about 2 weeks.

In the second week after we'd sorted out her affairs I thought I'd get stuck into her for some family information and secrets. I managed to get a couple of little snippets, but she was her same pain in the a$$ self till the end, which was the week after and 3 and a bit weeks from when the Oncologist gave his terminal diagnosis. So will never know anything more than that. :sad

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This Wednesday night (27 April) at 8.30 PM, 'Palazzo di Cozzo' is on Channel 22 ABC Plus.

[Here in Melbourne at least.]

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Hey small world ! Well yes and no.
My grandparents and Dad come from Fiume !!!
They were all run out of town by the Germans .
They landed in Sydney as well, many many Italians/Yougos/Cros came into Sydney can’t agree with Franco most re Melb - was pretty 50/50 I thought.
Arm I’ll check up about the surname change for yes once upon a time we were “ic” ours also changed to “ich”…..
My dad has told me why but can’t recall I’ll ask him again.
My Zio for yonks has been a huge historian of the Fiuman regions.
He’s got heaps of history and did you know there has been a newspaper called the Fiuman - he with my dad had been going to plenty lunch’s over the years with fellow Fiumani - there wasn’t a lot of them mind you.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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So what your saying is we might be related... :lol

Jedretic or Grasso is the family names from Mum's side.

I met some of Mum's family today at the internment we finally got to hold for her ashes.

I asked them about the name. It is spelt Jedretić. Original pronunciation is "Yedretich". The J is pronounced as a Y. But upon landing in Sydney, due to language barriers the ić became ich... And that's how it became recorded incorrectly for prosperity.

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wasn't there a "Brunsawick" ?? :raisedeye

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Certainly is - still exists its on Sydney Rd.

North Melbourne one hasn't existed for a long time, its just Footscray and Brunswick these days.

Footscray has been sold, its going to turn into an apartment development.

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That's like their migration records, because of language barrier they just put them all down as 1st January for their birthdays so the records are all up the **** :lol

Speaking of records, I got Nonna DNA tested with that ancestryDNA thing because she's the last surviving family member of that generation at the ripe young age of 91.

It turns out she's Italian :lol

I thought something else would show up there given how many different countries make up Europe and people moving around everywhere, but I guess in the late 1800s people were pretty stationary unlike post WWII Europe.

Though it predicted fairly accurately what region of Italy she's from, it got the region right but the province wrong, but she was from the next province across that it identified.

There's not many of that post WWII European migrant generation left, they're all in their 80s/90s and falling off the perch at a rate of knots unfortunately, this gets a rate in the Franco Cozzo documentary at one point.

A friend of mine has only been in the country for about 5 years, she came over from China and moved to Melbourne, she chose Carlton because of the Italian influence but its worth a laugh that in Carlton, only 33% of the population speak English at home, otherwise the most common language spoken at home is Mandarin, followed by Cantonese :lol

People look at Lygon Street as a success story and glamorise 'Little Italy', that's the nice side of it but its the result of how Victoria has failed to help integrate new communities into Melbourne for the past 80 years, that still occurs to this day.

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Back on topic please.

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Franco Cozzo is so similar to Nick Scali here in Sydney.
Both furniture kings and similar ages.

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Not paying attention are we.

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I didn't say that lol but who's to know IF our distant relos knew of each other....Fiume was a small coastal village.........
I have some info what/how things occurred about my Nonna/Nonno and my Dad and Zio's but seems Gaso won't approve me posting......