Giacomo Matina was born in Lampedusa on the 2nd December 1932. His father was a fisherman and his mother a housewife.
He started to help other fisherman at the age of eight and at twelve years of age he left school to start working as fisherman. He plied his trade between Lampedusa and Malta till 1958. In 1958 he got married to a Maltese woman, Carmela, and they had two daughters (Nicolette and Antoinette) and one son (Joseph). From 1959 till 1973 he travelled between Malta and Libya and worked as a steel fixer. In 1973 the family decided to move to Australia, where Giacomo worked as a labourer till 1997. He had been retired when the interview was recorded.