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and an urgency to find employment. Lorenzo, whose brother Gioachino had emigrated
to Australia two years earUer leaving behind a wife and four children, was a carpenter
and keen to find work in his trade. Alessandro and Abbondio were both farmers and
intent on securing labouring jobs in Melboume. The cousins remained in Melboume
for nineteen days, arguing about where they should go and what they should do, but
eventually decided to head for Jim Crow. The men who had accompanied them on the
voyage each went their separate ways: the Bonettis spent some time mining but
retumed to Ticino by 1858; Stocchini went to Castiemaine; Negranti died in Victoria in
1868 and Martino GarzoU retumed to Ticino by 1857.^^ The fate of the others has not
been documented.
At the Jim Crow mines the Quanchis met up with Alessandro's father
Vincenzo. Though little documentary evidence remains of Vincenzo's early activities
in Australia a letter, written by Domenico Bonetti in 1855, indicates that he was living
in the area of the Jim Crow mines: the day after his arrival in Australia, and prior to
his departure for Jim Crow, Bonetti had requested that all mail be sent to him at 'La
dressa di Vincenzo' (The address of Vincenzo).^^ Bonetti's use of the word dressa
suggests an early anglicisation of the Italian language^'* (the Italian word for address
being indirizzd) in a process which thus introduced his family in Ticino to such
changes. Revealing the whereabouts of his travel companions, the letter, like those of
the Pozzis, served as a vehicle of information for families in Maggia, increasing the
dependency of the illiterate settlers upon the literate and thereby possibly exacerbating
existing social divisions between the Italian speakers. After meeting up with Vincenzo,
the three Quanchis worked at various mining sites within a 60 kilometre radius south
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