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home) being recorded as 'consumption of the bowel'. Vincenzo's wife Anastasia died
four years later, leaving him with several smaU children for whom to care. Their
guardianship was assumed by Mary Ann (then 31 years of age), continuing a role
which she no doubt shared with her mother for many years. On 22 April 1898 Emilia
Louisa, aged 25, left the family home to join St Joseph's Convent of the Sacred Heart
in Mount Street, North Sydney. As she travelled the more than 600 kilometres to her
destination, Vmcenzo was reminded that the vastness of Australia could separate
families almost as much as retum to Ticino. Emilio later became Sister Mary Feddis
but worked only a brief time as a nun, dying on 26 March 1903. By joining the
convent she had, however, taken her different cultural and ethnic experiences into a
new community, thereby increasing Australians' awareness of the nation's early white
settlers.
War too, ironically, could be instmmental in bringing together groups of
different ethnic background. During the Boer War, which lasted from 1899 to 1902,
Franklin Perini fought in South Africa with the Scottish Horse. Upon his retum to
Daylesford he was met by a welcoming crowd of 500 to 600 people, including many
town councUlors and the mayor, who, at the official town hall welcome, expressed
pride m Trooper Perini's defence of King and Empire. Vincenzo's speech, in which he
declared 'that he was glad to see his son back again and proud to have such a son who
went to fight for his adopted country and for the British Empire,'"^ reinforced the role
his son had played. At the welcome home celebration, held a few days later in the
Hepbum Assembly HaU, Trooper Perini was carried to the stage by another retumed
soldier Captain Righetti.'*^ Both men were presented wdth medals and Trooper Perini a
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