Walking Down Memory Lane, My Memoirs: Story and Illustrations / by Thomas A. Marinato

MLMSS 5288 ADD-ON 1891/Box 1X

fonds

ca. 1890-1974

Textual Records, Graphic Materials, Clippings, Drawings, Ephemera, Photographs

877015

Microfilm : MAV/FM4/9356

0.55 metres of textual material, including photographs (1 outsize volume in outsize box)

Tom Marinato (1903-1973), early Sydney filmmaker and Watsons Bay identity, was born in Woolloomooloo and educated at Marist Brothers, Darlinghurst. He was the son of Michael Marinato and Rosaria, née Ristuccia, who arrived in Sydney from Salina, Sicily, in the 1890s. Michael Marinato worked in the mines at Broken Hill and opened fruit shops in Woolloomooloo and Rose Bay. In 1904 he took up a lease from the Sydney Harbour Trust to operate the refreshment rooms for ferry passengers at Watsons Bay wharf. Tom Marinato and his cameraman, Walter Sully, made several films and newsreels set on Sydney's waterways including My First Big Ship, Sydney's Darlings, Hunting the Octopus and Patonga Waterlilies. Tom married Bruna Domenici in 1923; they had three sons, Vince, Tony and Michael. After the death of his father in 1931, Tom and Bruna continued the business at the Watsons Bay Tea Rooms and later as the Continental Tea Garden. The restaurant proved popular with Sydneysiders and overseas visitors like the American writers of westerns and big-game fisherman, Zane Grey. The Marinato café, run by the family for three generations, was sold to the prominent Sydney seafoood restaurateurs, the Doyle family, in 1968.

Reference:
Compiled from the collection

A family album, compiled 1968-1974, with annotations by Vince Marinato, and including correspondence, newscuttings and photographs.

Approval for reproduction required: Written permission is required from the family of Vince Marinato

Vince Marinato (1923-2009) sourced from this family album some of the stories in his self-published memoir, The shop on the wharf : recollections of people and happenings in Watsons Bay, 1996

This collection was was acquired as part of The Italians in New South Wales Project