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THE JOURNEY
The Itahan-speaking immigrants who arrived on the Australian goldfields were
mostly young, strong males filled with the hope of quick profit and of being able to
retum home to their families. Despite the crippling poverty which they left behind, the
joumey to the goldfields soon awakened them to the enormous risk they had taken in
leaving their homelands and to the hardships they would endure. Lack of money had
meant booking the least comfortable and longest joumeys and these men were often
the victims of unscmpulous travel agents who deceived them about the conditions
under which they would be transported. The Pozzi and Morganti stories introduced to
some of the discomforts of the voyage: this chapter will describe in more detail the
traveUers' joumey to the ports of Melboume and Sydney and reveal the degree to
which it was made difficult by the travellers' own ignorance and poverty. It will show
how the travellers coped on first arrival and will describe their joumey overiand to the
goldfields. It wiU reveal how hardship and suffering, as well as the need to adapt to
the changing environment, made the joumey a rite of passage, its transformative
qualities a preparation for settlement. At the same time, the ongoing attempt to
hnpose famiUar meaning and significance upon the new experiences of the journey
epitomised the subsequent history of the ItaUan speakers' settlement, as described
throughout this study.
'L 'euforia della partenza\ wrote Giorgio Cheda, in his evocative description
of the Swiss emigration to the Australian goldfields, 'e la radicata speranza di fare
fortuna e di vincere la miseriaper la propria famiglia, asciugavano presto le lacrime
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