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with shutters or hessian covers. Cooking would have been performed on an open
fireplace built out from one end of a single room, while clothes would have been boiled
over an outside fire.^ The exact location of the home is not knovm: however, the
bmlding existed when Lafranchi applied for a Ucence in 1865 and may have been back
from the road on the south eastem rise of the block.^'* It was not an easy life for the
goldfields women ~ as Kate soon discovered with the birth of her first child ~
chUdbirth being a difficult and often dangerous procedure with no antiseptic conditions
and only neighbours or a midwife to assist at the birth. Some midwives would arrive
one week before the birth and remain wdth the new mother the three weeks following
but, more often than not, the mothers were retumed to their families directly after the
birth. The mother's bed would sometimes be a primitive piece of hessian nailed to a
sapling frame and she often had to endure conditions of extreme heat or extreme
cold.^* Kate gave birth to a daughter on 2 Febmary 1867 and named her Mary Kate
after her Irish matemal grandmother and her mother. By the following day, however,
the infant was dead and was a few days later buried in the Eganstown cemetery.
That same year, Gaetano's old travel companions Battista and Giovan
Tomasetti decided to retum to Avegno. Several of the viUage's emigrants had already
retumed by 1866, suggesting that they had achieved some of their financial goals or
were hungry for the familiarity of village life. Since both Battista and Giovan (by then
m their 30s) were married to local girls within weeks or months of their arrival, it
might also be possible that they had retumed to participate in pre-arranged marriages.
In marrying Kate, Gaetano was committing himself to a family life in Australia. By 22
March 1869, Kate had produced a son, named James after his matemal grandfather.
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