AUSTRALIAN ORGANIZED CRIME

Who are they? What are they? And how long have they been around. Well these are just some of the questions that I wanted answered for myself when I first found about that they were such a force down under. When I first heard about them I was under them impression that they were offsprings from the already successful Cosa Nostra families in the states and Italy including Sicily.

However I was surprised to find out the Australian Mafia had their own culture indented into the Australian culture. Going back to the turn of the 19th century, and to the late 18th century, Australia was beginning to blossom as a country or state, and it was during this time the Italian people would begin to stray away from the southern Italian province’s of Calabria and end up on the shores of Australia.

The Calabrian Mafia is locally known as N’Drangheta, and it was the N’Drangheta that would put the early foundations to what was to follow in the years to come.

The Early Rackets
When the Sicilians first emigrated from Sicily to the U.S they found that they had many big cities at their disposal, which helped them to entrench themselves into the big city communities of New Manhattan, Boston and Chicago. But when the N’Drangheta reached Australian shores, this wasn’t the case so their rise to prominence would take a different route. The route was to tax and extort farmers, Vincenzo Dagastino was first who would become notorious at this and then it would continue with many more continuing to take this path to riches. The farmers were completely helpless, as some of the farms were so remote and far away from any government authority. The N’Drangheta used this method right up until the end of Second World War.

The New Mafia
From WW2 and there after the Mafia would benefit more from the building of major cities in Australia, as they found it more appropriate to expand there business’s in more common areas such as labour racketeering and political corruption. But the Mafia found in Australia the area’s to build and produce cannabis plants, as they quickly turned their interests to the very rapidly growing hashish trade. All throughout southern Australia the Mafia installed many cannabis plantations. This provided the Mafia with a major racket that meant they were completely self-dependent, this continued well into the nineties and probably still does to this day, but during the nineties the Mafia would make ties with Triad clans and began to import heroin in exchange for cannabis.

Conclusion
My conclusion to what I know about the Australian Mafia is that although they are a menace down under it isn’t always brought into light, and the authorities are keen to sweep it under the carpet as they rely heavily on a good and healthy tourist trade, I don’t think for one minute that they have caused the same amount of problems in Australia as they have in the U.S and Italy but then again I get the feeling because we live so far away from them and we are so involved with what is going on in Europe and the U.S it is easy for the Australian Mafia to be ignored and go unnoticed by us all.