This short documentary follows Rosa, President of the Savoy Ladies Group, as she tells the story of Italians in the North-East, tobacco farming, women, family and friendship.

Every fortnight for thirty years members of the Myrtleford Savoy Ladies Group have met to play tombola, create plays, go on excursions and maintain their Italian heritage. The group was founded in 1983 to combat the social isolation of Italian women tobacco farmers in the Ovens Valley.

The film takes an observational look at the group’s modern day activities, through the eyes of Rosa, the group president. In the process the film sheds light on the difficulties faced by post-war Italian women migrants in North-East Victoria, their part in the local agricultural industry and on a distinctive and unique culture.

The Savoy Ladies Group documentary film was supported through funding from the Australian Government’s Your Community Heritage Program.

Directed by Jary Nemo

Produced by Samantha Dinning, Lucinda Horrocks and Jary Nemo

Written by Samantha Dinning and Lucinda Horrocks

10.20 minute short documentary film

Produced 2014

The migration story of the Ovens Valley began a long time ago. The first true settlers of Victoria’s mountainous North-Eastern region were the Pangerang, Minjambuta, Duduroa and Jaitmathang (Ya-itma-thang) peoples who spoke the Waywurra, Mogullumibidj and Dhudhuroa languages.

They inhabited the alpine areas and surrounding river valleys – now known as the Ovens, King, Buffalo, Kiewa and Mitta-Mitta Valleys - for tens of thousands of years. This picture looks out towards Mount Buffalo over the Ovens and Buckland Valleys.

transparency: toned glass lantern slide ; 8.5 x 8.5 cm

Migration has shaped and transformed the Myrtleford area for centuries. The original owners of Myrtleford were the Jaitmathang (Ya-itma-thang) people who spoke the now-lost Dhuduroa language.

They faced pastoralists and then gold-rush settlers in their country who migrated in the nineteenth century. Here, a family looks out from an encampment on the Buffalo River.

A huge wave of migration occurred in the Ovens Valley when gold was discovered in the 1850s.

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Melbourne : Ebenezer and David Syme, 'The Illustrated Australian News', January 23, 1878

In those days there were tensions between Anglo-European settlers and the Chinese who migrated in great numbers from Guangdong Province.

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Melbourne : Ebenezer and David Syme, 'The Illustrated Australian News', January 23, 1878

Chinese miners were subject to resentment and violence – notably in the famous Buckland Riot of 1857, where a group of Europeans violently stormed a Chinese camp on the Buckland River in the Upper Ovens Valley.

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Melbourne : Ebenezer and David Syme, 'The Illustrated Australian News', January 23, 1878

This 1878 illustration is from the gold fields of Bright, a neighbouring town of Myrtleford quite close to the Buckland River.

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Melbourne : Ebenezer and David Syme, 'The Illustrated Australian News', January 23, 1878

It shows a more benign attitude, but still makes a point of difference between the ‘English Miner’ and the ‘Chinese Digger.’

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Melbourne : Ebenezer and David Syme, 'The Illustrated Australian News', January 23, 1878

Tobacco and hops farming in the Ovens and King Valleys was begun in the nineteenth century by Chinese settlers of the post gold rush era. Pictured here is ‘Chinese Ah Tong’ of the Myrtleford area, circa 1930s.

As the tobacco industry grew in Myrtleford, tobacco kilns appeared. Tobacco farming started to take hold in great numbers in the 1930s, but it was after the war that the industry really dominated the town.

The post-war corrugated iron tobacco-drying kilns became a distinctive feature of the region. Here are tobacco kilns at the approach to Myrtleford with Mt Buffalo in the background in the peak of the tobacco industry, circa 1950-1960.

The Bonegilla Migrant Reception Centre, near Albury-Wodonga, received refugees from the Second World War and assisted migrants until 1971. Pictured are some of the first war refugees to arrive in 1948.

Bonegilla fed workers to many nearby industries, including the tobacco farms of Myrtleford. Myrtleford attracted workers from all over Europe, but Italians were the most numerous of all the migrants there.

photograph, gelatin silver, 9 x 14 cm

Women helped on the farms. Here Rosa Volpe (pictured, centre) distributes pesticide to the fields alongside her cousin (left) and her husband (right).

Tobacco grubs were a menace to tobacco seedlings and were controlled with chemicals.

Italian women would raise families on the farms, while performing domestic duties and undertaking farm work.

Here, two women cover the tender tobacco seedlings in the tobacco beds.

In the early days children were always around. Here a small child sits on the tobacco planter.

Tobacco harvesting and processing was a lot of hard work but also a time of companionship for the Italian women farmers of the area.

Here women work together tying up the tobacco leaves in the paddock. When mechanisation changed the labour requirements on the farms, and once children were grown and left home, many women on the farms became socially isolated.

It was an alienating experience for many Italian women who arrived in the Ovens Valley to raise families and farm tobacco. Coming from close-knit rural villages, many had never before travelled out of their home town before arriving in Australia.

They often didn’t appreciate the beauty of their new environment, with its unfamiliar trees and birds. They may not have appreciated this tourist postcard of the Ovens Valley, as seen from Mount Buffalo. Some women from the alpine areas of Italy, however, felt at home here.

negative: glass; 8.8 x 13.8 cm. approx

A major role for women on tobacco farms was grading the tobacco leaves into different quality types.

Family life centred around tobacco. Here a large Italian family is pictured near the drying kiln.

Women helped in all areas: here, driving the tractor as the tobacco is harvested.

It was a lonely experience for many of the women who migrated here to raise families and farm tobacco, particularly once mechanisation changed the labour requirements of farming and children grew up and left home.

When the tobacco industry ended in 2006, families experienced further social hardship. Here the hills of Myrtleford are glimpsed through a now-disused tobacco shed.

Corrugated iron tobacco drying kilns became a feature of the Ovens Valley landscape after the war.

Many still stand today though most of them are empty as the tobacco industry of the area ended in 2006.

Every fortnight members of the Savoy Ladies Group of Myrtleford meet to play Tombola, the Italian version of Bingo.

The Savoy Ladies Group was formed to combat the social isolation of the Italian women tobacco farmers of the area.

The Savoy Ladies Group became an important source of laughter and companionship for the Italian women tobacco farmers of Myrtleford.

It was founded in 1983 to form a social network for the women of the farms, and it still exists today. Pictured are the Group Treasurer Silvana Colombara (left) and Group President Rosa Volpe (right).