Caryn De Fazio's 'tobacco stick' Christmas tree is in the window of The Early Bird in Nunn St, Benalla.
Photo by
Simon Ruppert
When making a Christmas tree display for their business, few people would consider using tobacco sticks.
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In fact, it’s fair to presume that few people would even know what a tobacco stick is. If you were thinking it’s a colloquial term for cigarette, you’d be mistaken.
Benalla’s Caryn De Fazio, however, grew up around tobacco sticks and knew just where to find some.
“From 1958 to 1983, our farm was a tobacco farm,” she said.
“The tobacco sticks were handmade, to 4ft in length. Then all the tobacco leaves were sewn on to them in bushels, by the hundreds.
“They would then line them all up in the kiln to dry. So those sticks had a really important role.”
Caryn said her father-in-law, Lorenzo De Fazio, had thousands of them in his shed.
“He doesn’t actually know, but I had to ‘borrow’ them,” she said, while making air-quotes.
Caryn joked that Lorenzo was a bit of a hoarder, and was awaiting his response when he noticed four of his tobacco sticks had been used to make a Christmas tree.
“Someone’s going to tell him, or he’ll see it in The Ensign, she said.
“I did ask him about them, and he spoke for 20 minutes. But he didn’t ask why I’d brought them up.”
Caryn De Fazio has recently opened a cafe, The Early Bird, in the former Cake Maker's Daughter cafe’s premises on Nunn St.
Photo by
Simon Ruppert
Caryn said she was pleased to be able to celebrate her family’s history as part of the Christmas window display she has at her new premises.
“We’ve been here three weeks so far,” she said.
“And we wanted to jump on board with the other businesses doing Christmas displays.”
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