He was born in a small mountain village of Calabria called Agromastelli in the municipality of Caulonia whose origins go back to the Greek colonisation of Southern Italy in the 8th century BC. In 200 BC Caulonia was destroyed by the Romans after it sided with Hannibal during the Punic Wars. It later came to be known as Castelvetere until it resumed its ancient name after Calabria’s annexation to the Kingdom of Italy in 1862. One of Natale’s forbears made a name for himself as a staunch local supporter of Garibaldi during the famous “Expedition of the Thousand” that freed Southern Italy from the Bourbon regime.
He had to wait til the end of the war before returning once again to Italy and take his wife and child with him back to America. But, as fate would have it, his young wife died during the dreaded Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-1919 and Vincenzo became a widowed father with a six-yearold son to look after. His American dream seemed to have vanished forever until Teresa, a sister of his dead wife, accepted to marry him. The plan of going back to America was revamped and Vincenzo embarked on a new journey across the Atlantic Ocean to set things in order before being joined by his new wife and son.
At the end of World War Two, the people of Caulonia, most living in dire poverty, rebelled against greedy landowners and proclaimed a republic of their own. It was a short-lived undertaking, soon crushed by a full scale military operation involving both Allied forces and carabinieri units. 350 citizens were captured and put on trial for sedition. Most were ultimately pardoned, but their leader, a primary school teacher named Pasquale Cavallaro, was sentenced to eight years in prison.
Life seemed to smile again on Vincenzo but he was going to suffer another stroke of bad luck. When he arrived in New York, the US senate had approved new legislation blocking the admission of new immigrants and Vincenzo was forced to sail back to Italy and return home empty-handed. However, he was not a man willing to surrender to a life of hardship and privations. He had heard of another country, called Australia, much farther away than America, where he could try and build a future for himself and his young family. He needed time to save money for the long journey and he did not earn much working as a labourer in Caulonia’s countryside. Hence, some years went by and Vincenzo became father of a few more children.
When this dramatic episode was taking place, Natale Ieraci was in Australia and had just regained his freedom after spending five years in internment camps for enemy aliens. He had been arrested in Perth shortly after the Italian Fascist government had entered the war siding with Nazi Germany in June 1940. He had arrived in Australia one year before to reunite with his older brother Orlando who had left a few years previously. Natale’s father Vincenzo had an even more dramatic tale. At the age of 16 he found his way to the United States where he joined members of another Agromastelli family called Fragomeli who had moved to America during the years of the great wave of Italian migration to the new continent. A few years later Vincenzo returned to Italy to find a wife in Agromastelli and return to America. He married Carolina, a young woman of the Fragomeli family clan and in 1913 his first son Orlando was born. He then returned to America preceding his wife and child who were to join him after he would send the money for the sea passage but the outbreak of World War One made the plan impossible. 22 18 COVER FOOD&WINE STORY
ABOVE Natale Ieraci BELOW Natalina Dimasi, Natale’s wife
Natale, his second-born son, was about five years old when the fateful day of his father’s departure for Australia arrived. He still holds a vivid memory of him walking downhill until his image faded away in the morning haze. He was too little to imagine that 15 years later he would follow in his footsteps. However, as he was growing up in Agromastelli, the idea must have come to his mind even though the news from his father were anything but rosy. Due to the 1929 Great Depression, unemployment in Australia more than doubled, reaching 21% per cent in the early 1930’s. Almost 32% of the adult population were unemployed. Vincenzo had to struggle to find work and send some money to his family back in Agromastelli. He worked in the mines of Tasmania and the sugar cane plantations in Queensland but the little money he was earning was hardly worth his