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describing each of them as general servants and Giacomo's father as a squatter.^'*
Maddalena understated her age by six years, perhaps to keep the secret of her
advancing years from her husband. The wedding service was celebrated by Fr
Nicholas Bassetto, who had recently arrived in the Daylesford area; Bassetto's
appointment, along with that of another Italian speaker, Fr Barsanti, was a recognition
of the growmg size and stability of the Swiss and ItaUan populations in the 1870s (see
Tomasetti section).
In the same year as her marriage to Giacomo, Maddalena leamed that her
father, aged 65, had died. She and Giacomo were then living in Yandoit in a home
Giacomo's brother Nazzaro had built in 1864 (ref figure 12).^* Named Locamo, after
the Ticinese city near Maggia, it was a two-storey stone stmcture which Giacomo, a
stonemason by trade, may also have helped build. Many Italian speakers, finding the
area rich in good building stone, had constmcted their homes in the traditional manner
of the peasantry (see chapter Home and Family); well adapted to the alpine climate
(which can be hot in summer), these homes were both cool in Yandoit's summer and,
if properly heated, warm in its winter. The home was originally planned for a site
opposhe Cario Sartori's land where a hole was dug for the cellar. When it was later
decided to position the home a few metres away, the home left by the excavations was
a reminder to later generations of their forebears' former presence.
The two-storey home,^' which was erected in sandstone in a style typically seen
in Ticino, comprised a living area downstairs and bedrooms upstairs. The walls were
made from rough and irregularly sized stones which were laid horizontally to give the
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