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world, the Tognazzini and Morganti famiUes had become closely bonded, sharing in
one another's joys and sufferings. When Noe experienced appalling hardship on a
voyage to Austraha aboard the H. Ludwina, everyone lent a sympathetic ear: the
voyage which lasted an horrendous five months, exposed its passengers to inadequate
food supplies and sub-standard hygiene. Ill and emaciated, the passengers had been
off-loaded at Sydney ~ after being poorly informed of their destination ~ and left with
little altemative but to take a steamer to Melboume. The joumey had became
notorious throughout the Itahan-speaking conmiunity at Jim Crow, the following
details also being revealed:
Those 176 ItaUan-Swiss passengers on board the Dutch Heileage
Ludwina were initially convinced they had paid for a trip to Melboume
but actually they ended up in Sydney Harbour in October 1855 after a
most troublesome joumey. The ship's departure from Belgium's
Antwerp was delayed by efforts of the passengers to increase the food
supply which, however, remained scarce throughout the voyage.
During the first few weeks the third class passengers refiised to eat
mouldy biscuits and later out of Cape of Good Hope they were forced
to pay additionally for the rotten food. When they finally arrived in
Sydney after 149 days of near starvation their friends and relatives
couldn't recognize them.^'
Sharing in the lives of the Tognazzinis, Maurizio eventually became a much-loved
husband, son and brother-in-law of their family.
On their wedding day in 1862, Maddalena and Maurizio, who was then 27
years old, walked the four or so kilometres from Eganstown to Daylesford to be
married and, at the conclusion of the ceremony, walked the same distance home
again. While this appears a somewhat bleak picture of a wedding day, it was possibly
not so for these peasant folk, for whom carriage rides were an unnecessary and costly
extravagance: few occasions, even a wedding, could be permitted to detract from the
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