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Australia, Carlo had decided to settle permanentiy and requested his wife and children
to join him. Though presumably content to leave Biasca where economic hardship
persisted,* Giuseppa may have feared this reunion where, not only personal
attachments might have waned, but also traditional family roles been reversed. She
was possibly not the first wife of an emigrant to have grown accustomed to
independent decision-making in Ticino only to face the prospect of being reassigned a
traditionally submissive role as wife in Australia. Her children too might have feared
the reunion, their father now being littie more than a stranger. The family boarded the
Elizabeth Bright for AustraUa in 1861 (on the same vessel which also carried Giuseppe
Pozzi).' Luigia (the name by which she was better known) was then nine years old and
passed the time by sewing a baby's christening robe, a symbol of the skills and
religious beliefs which had been passed on by her family.
Whatever their misgivings, Giuseppa and her children could have anticipated a
more secure and comfortable life in Australia. If, however. Carlo was still living in his
hut at Hepbum, their disappointment and sense of disillusionment might have equalled
those of their immigrant male counterparts on their first arrival. Many women who
arrived to join to their husbands in the Colony were met with conditions little better, if
not worse, than those they had left behind ~ perhaps a one-roomed make-shift hut
containing a few chairs, a table and a bed ~ and their bittemess would have been all the
more intense because it was their ovm families, and not strangers, who had encouraged
them to leave their homes. Cario Vanina, however, had plans for a better home for his
family and was soon able to make them more comfortable. Profits from the sale cf
wine from a large vineyard he had planted at Hepburn, together with a small income
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