Produced in collaboration with SBS Spanish
TRANSCRIPT
At a small factory north of Brisbane – Alicia Mora-Hyde is making bespoke umbrellas in a range of styles and fabrics.
She has devoted 45 years to hand crafting these colourful creations, since migrating from her homeland of Chile.
“I came from zero to do what I'm doing now and I do well. People like that. But there hasn't been a rewarding thing in economics point. But I don't mind money is not everything. I'm happy as it is.”
Ms Mora-Hyde’s workshop is like a movie set – complete with hundreds of metal handles, and frames bought from Britain and Germany, plus brightly coloured fabrics imported from Italy and France.
So does she have a favourite?
“Rather little flowers, but bright and delicate too. But then there's bright one, they're beautiful for everyone. People love them.”
The 82-year-old still operates vintage equipment necessary to produce a single piece, and many of the machines almost as old as she is.
“They're about 70 something years, or 75. They're all still working perfectly. But they're very, very, very old. Come from Europe or from I think it's mostly than in Germany and Austria.”
The workshop houses up to eight thousand individual umbrellas. Over the years, Ms Mora-Hyde has honed the production process to a fine art – but says each piece is a labour of love that takes time and focus!
“First of all you have to cut them. Then you sew the overlook, then you put the top of the umbrella, and put the tips, you tie in to the frame, it's a lot to do. Once the handle is done, you had to make the strap, which is another little machine. So all in all, this is six thing to do, one umbrella. So, you take a long time.”
Ms Mora-Hyde is among the last remaining umbrella designers in Australia – if not the world, and one of very few women trained to make an umbrella from start to finish.
As a sole owner-operator, she says her advancing age makes production more difficult.
“I'm getting blind sadly, My left eye is already very little, left my hand, which I never in my entire left thought I have tried because I can only bend until there. And I have now very hard time to deal with the drilling machine.”
Ms Mora-Hyde knows a lot about hardship. After growing up on a farm in southern Chile as one of eleven children, she ran away from home aged 17.
“I run away because I was more ambitious, I suppose. I didn't want to stay in the farm. There was no future there. Legally, I wasn't allowed to leave until I was 21, but I didn't have to wait. I never do follow rules - even now. So I ran away, didn't have any dollar with me!”
That led to work as an unpaid maid living with a family in Temuco Chile, but she continued to dream of finishing school and a better life.
“My ambition was to follow until finished and study law. Nothing happened. I couldn't get the university, I never got more than 320 point and I need 600. So, I gave it up there the idea, and I said well I'm going to America. There a lady and she said, very easy to go to Australia and this time I didn't even know there was Australia!”
After working in a shop to save for a ticket, in 1971 Ms Mora-Hyde eventually embarked on her journey – armed with the knowledge that life was about effort and hard work.
“We got this plane with, for me, something I never heard of. I knew of the plane, but I never was in a big plane like this. And then we came to Tahiti. It was another novelty thing. And from there we flew Australia.”
Arriving in Sydney aged 29 - like many new arrivals with limited English – she discovered new challenges.
“I was very, very unhappy in Australia. And when you don't speak the language and they talk to you, you feel you're such a fool. And then I decided I will go back to Chile. And to do this, I could not save money.”
Before long her life took a turn she could never have envisioned – thanks to a contact who suggested she apply for a job
“A family who is looking for nanny for two little children. And I said don't think twice, take me there. I went to this family and then I got the job. It's nanny. So, the life start to turn a little bit better because when there is children involved, life is beautiful.”
However, the role turned out to be so much more! Her employer was also a master umbrella designer who finally taught her the trade.
In 1977, Ms Mora-Hyde finally earned a permanent position – hand-making umbrellas.
“He even made an umbrella for the Queen Mother, which I had the picture, He closed the business in 83 I think it was. And we took the stock and we stocked in our home because it was a big house.”
After taking over the business and renaming it Mora-Igra Umbrellas, Ms Mora-Hyde moved the operation to Brisbane in 2002.
She freely admits income has slowed in an umbrella market flooded with cheaper imports.
“Oh, it's been no profit, definitely. No, this is a hobby. It's only because I work alone, but it, it's covered the thing which I have to cover the costs of things, that's all. And very little the money for me.”
In 2017, Ms Mora-Hyde lost her husband, whom she met in her 60s.
She describes the 15 years they spent together as ‘her most enriching and happiest’ and still mourns the passing of the only man she has ever loved.
“And this is my sad life here. I'm not a happy person in this regard because I'm alone. I come here alone and I go home in an empty house without my darling husband - alone again.”
With her advancing age, Ms Mora-Hyde says it’s only a matter of time before she has to close the doors on her beloved business.
“I wouldn't like to, but I have to. Never, retirement doesn't exist, but I have to. This is something which is not my choice. I have to eventually, no now nor anytime soon.”
Even so Ms Mora-Hyde hopes someone will buy the umbrella business and keep making the colourful creations she is so proud to put her name to.
“I would like the name and the umbrella and the passion to continue this would be one thing, but time is running out. This is the problem.”
