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MILESI
By 1855, emigration to Australia by Italian speakers was still at its peak, with
over 1,000 arrivals from Ticino and a smaller but unknown number from the northem
regions of Italy. ^ Like the Ticinesi, the Lombards of northem Italy (ref figure 1) had
suffered crop failures and the threat of famine and accordingly sought drastic solutions
to their problems. Despite their differing political affiliations (Lombardy was then
under Austrian mle), Italian speakers of the alpine regions (as noted earlier) shared a
similar language and culture and hence feh a close bonding with one another. During
the Lombard insurrection of 1848, it had been the smuggling of arms by Ticinesi to the
insurgents which had prompted Austrian Field Marshall Radetzky to close the frontier
with Switzerland and to expel all Ticinesi from Lombardy. His decision had created
hardship for people on both sides of the border, the loss of work opportunities and
separation from friends and family, causing many Italian speakers to face a similar
destiny. Suffering the effects of both economic and political uncertainty, Ticinesi and
northem Italians alike had looked eagerly to emigration to the American or Australian
goldfields as a solution to their problems. Among the Italian travellers were several
members of the Milesi family who, against a background of hardship and deprivation in
Lombardy, sought reUef in the Victorian colony.
The small Lombard village of San Giovanni Bianco, the home of the Milesi
clan, lies nestled in the Brembana Valley at the foothills of the Swdss-Italian alps (ref
figure 2). Fifty kilometres from the Swdss border, it is 20 kilometres north of its closest
town, Bergamo, and 60 kilometres from Milan, the nearest city. While political
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