Hard workers

The Catalan migrants settled in different parts of Australia, depending on the work that was available. Many of them went to North Queensland to work in the sugar cane industry and little by little they started their own businesses. This is the case of Bruno Tapiolas, Josep Pla and an extense group of men from Vila-Seca. Some of them stayed up north but the big majority moved to Melbourne, where they worked in restaurants, vegetable markets or fish & chip shops. Others exported cork, like the San Miguels, or wine, like the Codinas. In Western Australia there was a concentration of Catalan priests in New Norcia, a Benedictine community founded in 1846 by Fray Rosendo Salvado (a Galician) and Josep Maria Benito Serra, the latter of Catalan origin.