Tino adds OAM to CV

By Kath Gannaway
AN ITALIAN migrant who came to Australia in 1952 and took a job cutting timber in the bush around Marysville has received the Medal of the Order of Australia in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List.
Sabatino (Tino) Gianforte OAM, was recognised for services to the community of Marysville.
Now 80, Mr Gianforte arrived in Australia as a young man with great expectations of working for the Victorian Railways.
After a less than glamorous trip sharing a cabin on a cargo ship with 500 other hopefuls, being fumigated and spending his first month being treated for pneumonia at Bonegilla Migrant Hostel, the fact that there were no jobs in the railways hit home.
With his fiance, Elsa, waiting for him back home in Turin, he could have been forgiven for wondering whether he had made the right decision.
“I never doubted it,” he said last week, sitting with Elsa at the dining room table of the Marysville home where the couple raised their two boys, Lewis and Leslie, and became an integral and much-loved part of the community.
They were married in a multicultural ceremony the day Elsa arrived in Melbourne (two years after Tino) and travelled over the Black Spur to find home in a two room ‘cottage’ without running water, a toilet or electricity.
As soon as they were able, both Mr and Mrs Gianforte became naturalised Australians.
Mr Gianforte has been recognised for his contribution to the management of public utilities and to aged care and sporting organisations in Marysville.
Among many roles he has played over the past 40 are chairman of the Marysville Waterworks Trust and the Marysville Water Board, being actively involved with Gallipoli Park, the chairman of the Lake Mountain Committee of Management, a member of the Marysville Historical Society, a foundation committee member of the Marysville Retirement Village, president for several terms of the Marysville Golf Club and Country Club where he also served as treasurer, captain and is a life member.
“We came to Australia to live, and have been privileged to become part of such a wonderful community,” Mr Gianforte said.
Mr Gianforte told the Mail he was thrilled with the award but said he had had the wonderful good fortune to be involved in everything he had done as part of a team of hard-working, innovative people who were totally committed to their community.
“Some of the older ones will see this and say ‘what is this about Tino?’,” he laughed. “But the new ones, they will be saying ‘who is this Tino?’,” he said with an endearing humility.