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Download (14Mb) - VUIR - Victoria University

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Welshmans Gully, to name a few. The stories of people who occupied these sites, and<br />

the events which took place there, have passed (along with intriguing names like<br />

'Bottie O'Porter Gully' and 'Don't Wake 'Em Gully') into Australian folk history.<br />

Despite their widespread mining activities, and the successes of a few, the<br />

overwhelming experience of the Italian speakers was disappointment. Most drew<br />

barely a pittance from the mines, lived in conditions of abject misery and yeamed to be<br />

back in theh' viUages. Many letters, like one sent from Jim Crow in 1855, described<br />

theu- misery:<br />

Teccai quella terra chiamata dell'ere: credeve di veder realizzati i<br />

miei segni, credeve d'aver raggiunta la desiderata meta, credeve<br />

infine di trevare un cempense dei sestenuti sagrifizi e dei cersi<br />

pericelesi; ma vane illusieni. Dove pensava trevar oro rinvenni<br />

pietre, dove credeve trevar pane, trove la fame e la miseria<br />

delFocchie ferece, e con un lavero quasi sproperzionato alle forze<br />

delPueme a stento m'e date rinvenire un tezze di pane.'^<br />

This writer also exaggerates the numbers of Ticinesi on the goldfields to cinquemila<br />

(5,000), perhaps perceiving himself surrounded by only poverty and despair. Drawing<br />

upon the oral traditions of his culture wdth the words 'miseria dell' occhio feroce'<br />

(grim-eyed misery), he further accentuates the suffering of his people. Tranquillo Pata<br />

(mentioned previously) wrote a similar letter to his brothers in 1856:<br />

e I'ere si treva nel piato, qualche velta se ne trova della valuta di<br />

cento fine a due cento franchi in un sol piate ma tante e tante volte<br />

non si treva nemeno a tastare, sono rare e rarissime quelle volte<br />

che si treva tante, qualche giorni si treva qualche cosa e qualche<br />

giemi nen si trova niente nemeno la spesa.<br />

Combined with the sense of failure came, for many Italian speakers, guilt at having<br />

deserted their famiUes: after ignoring the protests of friends and family they had placed<br />

everyone, including themselves, in further peril. While some immigrants tried to justify<br />

238

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