Download (14Mb) - VUIR - Victoria University

among the first Ticinese settlers to reach the Victorian goldfields. Their repcrts of the
colony's attractions, together with the shipping companies' encouraging advertising
(which had eventually fiUered through to all parts of Ticino) may have been sufficient
to convince the Guscettis of Australia's advantages. The family might also have
anticipated the enormous need for medical practitioners in a newly established colony.
Intending their move as permanent, the Guscettis bid farewell to home and loved ones
and prepared themselves for re-settiement in a remote British outpost.
The Guscetti family ~ mother, father and four children ~ departed from
Liverpool on 7 November 1854 aboard the Gypsy Bride bound for Australia.*" Only
another ten Italian speakers accompanied them on their voyage, most being restricted
to transport aboard the cheaper, and hence less comfortable, German vessels. Though
this slightly easier joumey may have shielded the Guscettis from the enormously hard
Ufe which awaited many immigrants on the goldfields, it was, nevertheless, long and
tedious and burdened wdth the responsibility of tending four young children under nine.
It would have been wdth a sense of relief that the family finally disembarked at
Melboume on the 12 Febmary 1855. The Guscettis may have intended to remain in
Melboume ~ both Severino and his wife were accustomed to life in a large city ~
however, their impression of 'Port-Philips' as a city in a state of grave commercial
crisis, suggested they move quickly on to Jim Crow.**
The four-day overland joumey to Jim Crow ~ travelling over appalling roads
and under the intense summer sun ~ provided perhaps the first real glimpse of the
harsh Australian landscape. Despite this, Severino expressed optimism in a letter to a
262