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TOMASETTI
Like Vincenzo Quanchi, Gaetano Tomasetti was another of the pioneer
Ticinesi who made his way to Australia in the peak year of 1854. Also from the Valle
Maggia, Gaetano grew to adulthood in the viUage of Avegno, situated a few
kilometres from Locamo. Like many other small viUages of the region, Avegno, with
just 399 inhabitants^ was badly affected by the economic and political turmoil of the
1850s. Previously, it had been a relatively self-sufficient village with only three per
cent of its men and women seeking seasonal work in nearby regions to supplement
their incomes.^ By the mid-1850s, however, the village had grown unable to sustain its
population, famine threatened and the people began to look to the goldfields of
America and Australia for solutions to their misery. Avegno's beauty ~ 'with its
church tower, narrow irregular street paved with cobble stones and its slate roofs
covered with more'^ ~ belied the poverty and suffering of its people. Many families,
including the Bianchis, Bizzinis, Bondiettis, Crispinis, Fantonis, Nicolas, Pedrottis,
Ramazzinas, Storias and Tomasettis, lost sons and fathers to the goldfields in a period
of emigration which had by 1860 reduced Avegno's population by nine per cent.'*
While Avegno would never suffer the losses of some villages (such as Vincenzo
Quanchi's village of Maggia, which, it will be recalled, lost almost 50 per cent between
1843 and 1873), the impact of emigration, with its accompanying social upheaval, was
nevertheless great. By the mid-1870s, more than fourteen per cent of the population
had departed for AustraUa or America.* Most were men desperate to leave their
homeland in search of better opportunities; others were lured by the persuasive
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