The Australian Women's Register

Nerina Beccarelli was born in Gwalia the youngest child of Maria Tavalli nee Calneggia and Mick Calneggia. Her parents had migrated from Italy to Western Australia, where her father first worked on the Lakewood Woodline and then the Sons of Gwalia Mine.

In 1919 her father Mick died of an infection in the Leonora Hospital and the family moved to Kalgoorlie where her mother worked as a cleaner and was paid from the Mine Workers’ Relief Fund.

Maria Tavalli married coal miner, Martin Bonazzi, who died of silicosis in 1940s.

Nerina attended the South Boulder Primary School, playing baseball and other sports. She continued to speak Italian at home, but speaks of other Italians as foreigners. She left school at fourteen to work as a domestic and she later worked as a waitress at the Cornwall Hotel.

She married at twenty one to Frank (Francesco Becarelli), a miner, and moved to Norseman. They had three sons, Louis, Albert and Frank.

Post-war, Nerina helped her husband work in a market garden in Sommerville. In 1983 her husband died of silicosis. Nerina died in Esperance in 2018.