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When actor Anthony LaPaglia was approached to be the face of upcoming ABC documentary series The Black Hand — investigating the little-known reach of Italian mafia into Far North Queensland cane fields in the 1920s and ’30s — he had more than just a professional interest. It also resonated on a personal level.
The three-part series explores the struggle of early Italian migrants and the question of what migrants bring from the ‘old country’, and what they leave behind. The program documents the Black Hand’s decade of extortion, arson, kidnapping and murder and links to the underworld in Calabria in southern Italy.
The migrant odyssey is a story LaPaglia can relate to. His father, Eddy, was among the post-war wave of Italians to move to Australia in the 1950s.
Eddy LaPaglia also came from Calabria, where the leader of the Black Hand, Vincenzo D’Agostino, grew up and where the mafia has cast a long shadow and still sparks fear today.
“If your father was still alive, how do you think he would have reacted when you told him you’re making a documentary about the mafia?” I asked LaPaglia.
“I think he would have had a stock answer, which is ‘it’s not true, it’s all bullshit’, and then he’d kind of let me know through a smile that some of it is true. But it was never spoken about,” he says.
An honest man who made a living as a mechanic in Adelaide, LaPaglia’s father was never involved with the mafia in any way but Anthony LaPaglia recalls growing up with an awareness that some people on the fringes of the family and among the local Italian community weren’t to be messed with.
“I had relatives — most weren’t involved — but some were involved to various degrees. But it’s not like we sat around a table and discussed the mafia, it was more observational,” he says.
“No one had to tell you, you just instinctively knew when people came to the house, some people got a little more respect, some people didn’t, this is someone you don’t want to piss off, this is someone that it’s OK if you piss them off.
“So, I knew that some of this [mafia] stuff was going on in Australia in the ’60s and ’70s but I had no idea it was going on the 1920s and ’30s and I think it [this documentary] shows an interesting side of Australian history that you don’t really hear about, along with a lot of other parts of our history that have been omitted.”
The knowing silence LaPaglia describes that’s endured through generations of Italian-Australian families was something producer Adam Grossetti came up against 20 years ago when he started digging around in Australia’s murky mafia past.
Through interviews with descendants of the gang’s victims, historians, criminologists and mafia experts, he’s pieced together a compelling and surprising story that some were initially reluctant to tell.
“When I started visiting North Queensland farms, way back in 2001, tentatively approaching the subject, talking to people and making rough video recordings – these were people who were then in their 80s and had been touched by the gang, or their family had had experiences with them — there was a reticence to discuss it,” recalls Grossetti.
“I did get a couple of phone calls — no phone calls that warned me off the subject, but phone calls saying ‘hey, just tell us what you’re doing’ and I think the reticence came from their desire not to make the Italian community look bad or bring up those bad memories.
“In about 2005, I also made contact with the great-nephew of Vincenzo D’Agostino and I was naively taking baby steps into a subject I was cautious about, with good reason, but he actually said he’d love to meet me and wanted me to know that it was a long time ago for his family and a completely different set of circumstances.
“So, what I found interesting over 20 years of working on this project, as new generations come up, they’re more curious and open about the past and it’s enabled some of them to reflect on the experiences and the hardship that their ancestors went through that they weren’t aware of.
“I think that’s why it took a considerable amount of time to get this project to the screen because there was a kind of seismic shift with newer generations being more open minded and willing to talk about it. And to watch some of the farmers that you’ve kept approaching over 10 or 15 years to come to an acceptance that what their family went through was an important story to tell was quite profound.”
What did help open doors was Grossetti’s Italian and Far North Queensland heritage. His grandparents were among those who immigrated to the region from Italy in the 1920s, living in Ingham and working in the cane fields. Grossetti grew up in Cairns and has a deep affection for the region.
Alongside a tale of gangsters and those who stood up to them, The Black Hand gives an insight into the challenges early Italian migrants faced settling in Australia at a time of the White Australia Policy, the Great Depression and imported tensions from the rise of fascism back home.
A desire to honour his grandparents’ hard work and sacrifice is what’s driven Grossetti for two decades to share this slice of history with a broader audience.
“Growing up, I had heard great tales about the hardship migrant Italians experienced although I hadn’t heard about The Black Hand, my grandparents were on the right side of the law. As I got older, I thought more and more about what my ancestors had given as migrants to Australia, so part of this is a love letter to my grandparents and to the North,” he says.
“I think what might fascinate an audience is that this documentary relocates the gangster trope to the tropical north, looks at a brief period where early Italian migrants endured a lot from within, and from the wider Australia.
“We see the rise of right-wing ideology as Mussolini trumpets Italian fascism to the world, are there comparisons to be made today? Perhaps it’ll resonate with audiences that draw comparisons with challenges their own communities have faced or are simply fascinated by the rich history that expands from a small corner of Australia and gets tangled up in global events.
“Or they might just like the gorgeous scenery of Far North Queensland and Italy — I’ll be happy with that, too.”
LaPaglia’s pilgrimage to his father’s birthplace
As well as traversing Australia’s cane country, the documentary gave LaPaglia an opportunity to travel to Calabria and visit Palmi, where many of the Black Hand members came from and, for the first time, the town of Bovalino, where his father was born. He found the house Eddy LaPaglia grew up in and got a sense of what his father had surrendered.
“It was fantastic, and it actually helped me understand my father a lot more,” LaPaglia says.
“I realised what he gave up. I don’t think he was that fond of Australia, to be honest. Back in the ’60s, Italians weren’t particularly well treated, nor were Greeks or anyone from the Mediterranean.
“I think he found himself in Australia and made the best of it. He was an early adopter, his brothers barely spoke English, but my father took English lessons, built a business, tried to integrate.
“The rest of the family, when you entered their homes you could be back in Italy, they didn’t really leave Italy. So, when I went to his hometown, I could see what my father was missing. It’s a seaside town and it’s a very beautiful place so it gave me a new perspective, a greater understanding.”
While he says he had a happy childhood growing up in Adelaide, like many children of the so-called ‘new Australians’ (his Dutch mother was also a migrant), LaPaglia experienced racism.
“I have a lot of great memories, Adelaide was fantastic, it was big and empty and as a kid you could go out all day and ride your bike around [but] it was also tough,” he says.
“Australia had a very narrow view of anyone from another country unless it was England. Everyone wants to go to Italian restaurants now but that’s the kind of stuff I’d have to dump on the way to school so I didn’t get tortured for it.
“At the high school I went to the teachers were tremendously racist, they’d intentionally mangle the kids last names. But I am not trying to be a victim here. It wasn’t something that we considered good or bad, it was just the way life was.
“As I got older, and I started seeing my father go through some stuff at the hands of a bit of racism, that got me a little more worked up. But it was a different time and I think Australian has grown up considerably.”
When filming in parts of Calabria, Grossetti says he was careful about how he went about asking questions about the mafia, but a bigger problem was keeping his imagination in check.
“There were moments when we were filming where you go, ‘oh, what was that about?'” he says.
“For example, one day we were filming on the top of a hill, one road in, the same road out, and the hillside caught on fire. We don’t know what happened, someone could have just dropped a cigarette, but it was our first day filming and we were like ‘oh, gosh!’
“We also had one or two people who would always be lingering around when we were filming, they just had a vibe about them, but we never felt threatened or in danger, we felt embraced.
“The Italian crew was fantastic and accommodating, as were the people of Calabria, even in the notorious drug trafficking area of Palmi. People knew why we were there, and they were blown away that these Australians had come over to tell a story that was linked to their own cultural legacy, migration and even the criminal element, but it transcended that and we had a hell of a lot of support over there.”
Grossetti first approached LaPaglia, a Golden Globe and Tony Award winner whose screen credits include the acclaimed Australian film Lantana and US crime drama Without A Trace, when his project was in its infancy and was initially envisaged as a feature film.
He’s grateful LaPaglia’s has stuck with it as its evolved over the years and is relieved to have been finally able to deliver that love letter to his grandparents and the north.
“I worked really, really hard on this and sacrificed a lot,” he says.
“I sacrificed my time, my money, my blood, sweat and tears over the course of 20 years because I kept believing in the story. This story has components that engage community, politics, history, the complexities of life and of being a human being. And I’d like to acknowledge the people of Innisfail and Ingham — this story is for them.”
The Black Hand premieres on Tuesday, June 27, on ABC TV and iview.
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