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equipment and began their search. News of Serafino's whereabouts reached his family
through Stefano's letters: 'Dirette a Righetti di Someo che il suofiglio e sano ed e
andato alia mina con Giacomo Sartori, Pezzoni e suo figlio and con il svo cognato
Adamina'.^ As weU as indicating contact between the villagers of Someo and
Giumaglio, this letter also points to the continuing importance of extended familial and
viUage networks into which the new settlers were enmeshed. At the same time, the
networks operated within new contexts, and to that extent represented a broadening of
conceptual horizons. Stefano and Serafino mined as partners for a time at an open
claim in the Daylesford district using the sluice-race recovery method to extract what
little they could from the soil. They were eventually joined by Giuseppe Righetti and,
before long, also by his brothers Battista and Celestino.
Battista, who was eighteen years old and married, and the 23 year old
Celestino, also married and the father of a child, had departed from Someo in 1855,
one year later than their brothers. They had travelled overland to Antwerp, where they
boarded the vessel H. Ludwina,^ which (already noted through the experiences of Noe
Tognazzi in the Morganti section) provided its passengers with one of the most
horrendous sea voyages ever made to Australia. Departing on 16 May 1855, Celestino
later wrote down his experiences in the hope that they would be read by future
generations of his family: perhaps experiencing the guilt of many immigrants who had
left their famiUes, he wanted to document the hardships he had endured. With no
description of the new (and one would expect interesting) places he was visiting, such
as Paris, Havre, Dieppe, Basil, Pmssia and Holland, he gave instead only detaUs of his
miserable voyage: 'Durante tutto questo viaggio di mare siamo stati trattati
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