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descendant has suggested that Battista and Giovan may have travelled to Australia
aboard the Singapore, in which case they departed from Hamburg on 2 August 1854
and arrived on 22 October 1854, just one day before Gaetano." No records remain of
the boys' early years m Australia though it is likely they looked for skilled work in
Melboume within the booming building industry. Family history suggests that Gaetano
may have found employment as a stonemason on Scots Church in Collins Street but, as
the city's Presbyterian churches were mostly built in the 1840s and again in 1873, it is
more Ukely that he was working on St Patrick's Cathedral which was built between
1850 and 1858.^^ The ItaUan speakers had quickly eamed a reputation for their
exceUent stone working skiUs and were sought after on several major constmction
sites. Though language difficulties prevented some men securing work, for others the
workplace allowed a recognition of their talents, reinforcing positive notions about
their 'traditional' culture and laying the groundwork for future integration into an
Australian setting.
Gaetano, Battista and Giovan possibly departed together from Melboume and
were in time for one of the biggest gold strikes which occurred in the Daylesford area:
by March 1856, the finds at Deep Creek near Eganstown (beyond Egan's Run) were
attracting many thousands of hopeful miners. Among those who arrived to mine the
gold were staff from the Melboume Botanical Gardens who downed their rakes and
hoes to take up mining tools: many permanent settlers thus joined with the immigrants
in abandoning jobs and riskmg their futures on the goldfields. Gaetano Tomasetti may
have mined at Deep Creek or at other sites with the Sartori family (possibly a different
family from that at Yandoit) and there is a strong likelihood that he and Sartori also
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