Lost film footage of the construction of Newcastle’s Mall Car Park on King Street has emerged as the demolition of the 59-year-old building gets underway.
Key points:
- Demolition of the 59-year-old Mall Car Park at 92 King Street is due to be completed by mid-January 2022
- Concrete for the car park was supplied by De Martin Brothers, a firm started in 1949 employing hundreds of Italian migrants
- Founders of some of the Hunter’s longest-running concreting companies started out at De Martin Brothers
The movies, filmed by late Newcastle concreting pioneer Tony De Martin and digitised by his family members, have brought a flood of memories back for members of the Italian community, including Giuseppe Suprano.
Mr Suprano, who worked on the King Street car park construction in 1961, remembers the seven-storey car park as one of the biggest jobs at the time.
“That was something really unforgettable for me because it was one of the biggest jobs in Newcastle,” the 81-year-old said.
The concrete was supplied by De Martin Bros, a Mayfield company founded in 1949 by Italian brothers Antonio and Vincenzo, which gave many of the industry’s names their start.
“It’s really sad in a way, but it’s a good experience for me to have worked there and seen the car park has been working excellent right through until now,” Mr Suprano said.
“We couldn’t survive, we couldn’t even go to the shop and buy food because they wouldn’t give us the credit.
“We came out to Australia, and my first job with Tony De Martin I was getting 20 pounds a week.
“With 20 pounds, we were able to survive, three of us.”
‘It started with an old truck’
Loretta Schiavon, 84, remembers De Martin Bros as a firm that provided a start to many of the founders of company names that still exist today such as Di Prinzio, Michilis, Cannavale and Suprano.
“Jimmy and Tommy [Michilis] became very big,” Mrs Schiavon said.
Mrs Schiavon’s father, Luigi Tonitto, was the brother-in-law of De Martin Bros founders Tony and Vince and one of the earliest workers to join the company in the late 1940s.
At first the De Martin brothers worked for Sydney’s Melocco brothers, another family company hailing from Toppo in northern Italy.
The brothers created decorative terrazzo for the Royal Newcastle Hospital and the State Library, before starting their own company in Mayfield making granite benchtops.
In the 1950s and 1960s De Martin Bros employed hundreds of Italian migrants on a variety of construction projects for heavy industries such as BHP to suburban petrol stations.
“Service stations in Newcastle, every one of them were De Martin brothers,” Mrs Schiavon said.
‘We never looked back’
Mr Suprano, whose sons still work in the concreting business in the Hunter, described Australia as a land of opportunity for migrants.
“We all took up concreting because we didn’t speak the language and Tony De Martin was the biggest company,” Mr Suprano said.
“And so one would talk to the others and say, ‘You can get a job [with] Tony De Martin, they’re all Italians, and you don’t have to worry about the language straight away’.
“We used to go to work at Cessnock, Muswellbrook, Singleton in the back of a ute and all sing along in the morning on the way.
“Apart from being a beautiful country, [it was] full of opportunity and we just never looked back, never looked back.”
Making way for new views
Owner of the car park, the City of Newcastle, said a structural assessment carried out in March 2020 led to a decision to close the site due to public safety concerns.
It says the demolition will make way for a “stunning view corridor” between the harbour and the Christ Church Cathedral, and includes plans to retain 380 public car parking spaces.
The demolition is due to be completed by mid-January next year.
Disclosure: Anthony Scully is a grandson of Tony De Martin
