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Download (14Mb) - VUIR - Victoria University

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achieve three or four layers. When the press was m operation, the logs were jammed<br />

tightly down to squeeze the juice from the grapes. Loaned out to members of the<br />

community, its efficiency symbolised the skill and ingenuity of the ItaUan speakers.<br />

By 1864 Giuseppa was again pregnant. However, the chUd, named Fortunato,<br />

died in infancy. Her last child Frederick (Federico?) arrived in 1866, giving to the<br />

older Vanina children, who were by now fourteen and sixteen, two younger brothers<br />

with whom they shared no common experience of Ticino. Charlie and Fred were<br />

raised within the dual culture of their Italian-speaking family and their Anglo-Celtic<br />

community. Though Luigia and Giuseppe had mixed with English speakers at the local<br />

Hepbum school, the family was almost certain to have communicated in its Swiss<br />

dialect and to have performed many of the rituals associated with its ethnic and peasant<br />

heritage. Typically, both Giuseppe and Luigia were taken from school at age fourteen<br />

to contribute their labour to the family's productivity,** Carlo by this time drawing<br />

income from a variety of sources. During the 1870s, he was described in the Shire of<br />

Mount Franklin rates books as a farmer, vineyard owner/vigneron, miner and<br />

storekeeper; granted a Uquor licence in 1871,** this last venture was possibly an outiet<br />

for home-made wine. In the 1870s, the Vaninas also increased their land holdings with<br />

a further half hectare block opposite their home in Hepbum.*' Together with the<br />

income from the hire of theu- wine press, the family was relatively financially secure.<br />

At some stage the Vaninas made extensions to their home to allow them to<br />

take in boarders. Mostly Italian speakers, who had recently arrived in the Colony,<br />

according to family tradition, they were welcomed into a warm and generous<br />

280

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