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long, the men slept m make-shift huts or tents, usually on a mattress of straw or leaves
covered by flea-ridden blankets. Poor sanitation, plagues of flies and polluted water
helped spread diseases such as dysentery and typhoid fever, and sandy blight was a
common eye infection. Few Italian speakers possessed good protective clothing,
such as strong moleskin or corduroy trousers, wooUen jumpers, hats and waterproof
boots, with many suffering rheumatism from working m water and sleeping in damp
conditions. Food ~ mostly mutton, damper and black tea ~ was often unattainable, its
cost, as well as that of other essential items on the goldfields, being inflated to equal
the retaU prices in Melbourne.^* Added to the discomfort of miners was the risk of
injury from sharp and heavy mining tools or from the need to descend deep into mine
shafts (recall, for example, the incident involving Vincenzo Perini). Lacking goldfields
experience, several ItaUan speakers also fell into mine shafts after dark, one Tranquillo
Pata from Ticino breakmg his leg on a ten metre drop.^'
While many ItaUan speakers resigned themselves to the risks and the
discomforts ~ peasant life had always included both ~ they suffered enormously the
separation from families. In 1855, Ticinese immigrant Giacomo Ceresa wrote a letter
home which typified the feeUng of many compatriots:
Ci rincresce pero di essere cesi lontani dalle nostre case senza
petere avere alcuna netizia delle stesse in questi deserti ... io non
manco di ricordarmi di lei [meglie] e del mie figlio e che presto
speriame di venire alia nostra casa, come ne ho desiderie.
The word deserti (deserts), suggests the hostility and isolation of the Australian
landscape though the choice of word might also reflect hyperbole thought to gain the
sympathy of those left back home. Other immigrants defended themselves against
loneliness by writing as though they had never left home:
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