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emained beyond the means of many Italian speakers to return home, and they resigned
themselves to a life in Australia.
Some immigrants were prevented from returning home by a sense of shame or
guilt for their failures in the goldfields . Having ignored advice of compatriots, they
feared the accusing glares and inevitable family bittemess. Though many emigrants
had been less than fourteen or fifteen years old at the time of their departure, and hence
barely capable of a well considered decision, they felt their remorse no less. A number
of immigrants avoided retum because of painful memories of the voyage; so
excmciatingly long and fearsome had it been that the vast seas were both a
psychological and actual barrier to repatriation. Some immigrants, especially those
who had been unable to communicate in writing with their families during the years of
absence, had also lost the passion of their emotional ties and had formed new, in some
cases bigamous, relationships.* Charles D'Aprano also argues that, after a time, it
became apparent to some Italian speakers that Australia was not such a bad place after
aU and that it was just as well to seek a living here as retum to their own desolate
homelands.' Whatever the cause, most immigrants were sooner or later forced to
accept the inevitability of a future life in Australia and the need to concentrate on the
skiUs which would help them to best survive.
Not all the Italian speakers unable to return to their homelands chose, however,
to remain at Jim Crow. While some moved on to California or New Zealand, where
they continued to seek for gold (Leonardo Pozzi being one example), others ventured
into more progressive areas in the Victorian colony. The vast majority, however,
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