Anthony Albanese Family History

Overview

Anthony Norman Albanese, the 31st Prime Minister of Australia, was born on March 2nd 1963 to Carlo Albanese and Maryanne Ellery in Sydney, Australia.   

His parents had met in March 1962 on a voyage from Australia to England on Sitmar’s TSS Fairsky where his Italian father had been working as a steward.  They did not continue their relationship afterwards as Carlo was already betrothed to someone back in Italy. 

Growing Up.  Anthony grew up with his mother and his maternal grandparents in a council house in the Camperdown suburb of Sydney.  His mother worked part-time as a cleaner although suffering from chronic rheumatoid arthritis.  Her life was difficult.  

Anthony was told that his father had died in a car accident.  Later, when he was fourteen, he was given the truth.  He did not actually meet his father – who was still alive – until 2009, some forty-six years after he was born. 

Politics.  Anthony joined the Australian Labor Party in 1979 when he was fifteen.  He then attended Sydney University where he was active in student politics.  After completing his degree in 1984, he found work in the Labor Party as a research officer and advisor.

Anthony’s entry into Parliament came in 1996.  His rise up the ranks of the Labor Party was quite rapid after that:

• first appointed to the Shadow Cabinet in 2001
• Cabinet minister and Leader of the House in 2007
• and Deputy Leader of the Labor Party in 2013.

Anthony became Leader in 2019 and led his party to victory in the 2022 general election.  Three years later he returned as Australian Prime Minister after a landslide election victory.   

The Albanese Connection

Anthony bears the name of his biological father Carlo Albanese from Italy.  This surname in Italian means “Albanian” and would describe those of Albanian descent who had settled in southern Italy.  The Albanese numbers in Italy are around 20,000 today.  The most (22 percent) are in Puglia on the SE heel of Italy. 

Carlo Albanese hailed from Barletta, a coastal town on the Adriatic Sea in Puglia.  He was born there in 1931.  He returned in 1963 after he had left the Sitmar shipping line and married his fiance.  They had two children, a son named Ruggero and a daughter Francesca.  Carlo worked as a school janitor and as a maitre d’ at a local restaurant.  He lived for over fifty years at the same address in Barletta until his death at the age of eighty-three.   

Following his mother’s death in 2002, Anthony enlisted the help of friends and colleagues in order to trace Carlo’s whereabouts.  Although Carlo’s shipping line was then defunct, Anthony’s helpers managed to locate old documents in storage in Genoa that gave Carlo’s employment details. 

In 2009 Anthony was able to make contact and, during a visit to Italy, meet up with him in Barletta.  He made two further visits to see his father, in 2010 and 2013, before Carlo passed away in 2014.   

Ellerys in Australia

Ellery as a surname derived from Hillary and has Anglo-Irish origins – from the Anglo-Normans who invaded Ireland and established themselves in Cork.

The Ellerys here are Irish and Catholic but first traceable in England.  Richard and Elizabeth Ellery were married in Hampshire in 1815.  By the 1820’s they had moved to Manchester.  Their son Valentine was born there in 1829. 

Valentine the Immigrant.  Valentine and his wife Mary, newly married, left Manchester for Australia.  They came as free settlers on the Hyderabad to Adelaide in 1854. 

They were in Chippendale near Sydney two years later.  The 1872 census found them with six children in Maitland, NSW and Valentine employed as a teacher.  Twenty years later he was still a teacher, but in Waterloo, a Sydney suburb.  He died in 1901.  

Later Ellerys.  Anthony’s line from Valentine went as follows:

• his son William Innocent, born in 1863
• to his grandson George Vincent, born in 1894
• and to his great granddaughter Maryanne (Anthony’s mother), born in 1936.

William started  work as a letter sorter for the post office in 1883.  But seven years later he was found guilty of stealing stamps and letters. 

In his defense William claimed that he had been overworked by the post office.  He also said that he had recently been married, that he was only 27 years of age, and that his wife had been an invalid and was only just recovering from her illness. But he was sentenced to eighteen months imprisonment in Darlinghurst jail.

Things later stabilized for William.  He found work as a clerk and was a pianist with his own band who performed locally.  He and his wife Elizabeth raised eleven children, ten sons and one daughter who died young. 

George, born in 1894, was the third of their sons.  He married Maynor Thorburn in Sydney in 1921.  They had four children, including their youngest Maryanne, Anthony’s mother, who arrived seven years after the others in 1936.

This George was a printer by trade who had a somewhat dodgy history.  In 1932, according to the court case brought, he was accused with others of allegedly conspiring to produce counterfeit medicines for sale.  In 1950 he was in court again, successfully appealing this time against convictions and fines imposed.  He told the court that he was the Provincial Grand Primo of the Order of Buffaloes in Sydney.

George and Maryanne.  Maryanne’s elder brother George, born in 1929, was an entertainer who was active in the 1960’s and 1970’s.  Going under the stage name of Johnny Craig, he was well known for his comic impersonations.  He also did voice-over jingles for TV ads. 

Curiously, his most notable achievement may have been his Nights Commander of St. Agatha award from the small country of San Marino, given to him on the QE2 in 1990.  George was married twice and died in 1999 at the age of seventy. 

George was on the Fairsky entertaining with his younger sister Maryanne on that fateful voyage in 1962 when she met the dashing steward Carlo.  Anthony has a photo which shows the three of them on the ship.  It is probable that Anthony was conceived during Maryanne and Carlo’s time together in England.  

But when Maryanne returned to Sydney in late 1962, she had a decision to make about her unborn child.  As a Catholic she felt the pressure to have the child adopted because of the stigma that was attached to a single mother.  In the end she decided to keep the child.  She gave him his father’s name of Albanase.

They lived in her parents’ home in Camperdown, Sydney and stayed there after her parents passed away in the 1970’s.  Her life was difficult.  Anthony said that she was “spent” when she died at the age of sixty-five in 2002.  But he said that she passed on her strong values that helped him become who he was to be.   

Anthony Albanese’s Family Tree

Maternal Ellery Line