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planting vegetables, fi-uit trees, crops, grape-vines and by keeping a littie livestock.
Both Maurizio Morganti and Gaetano Tomasetti, (cf above earlier sections), began
small-scale farming not long after their arrival, purchasing a few cows in common wdth
other compatriots: seUing milk to the miners, they were typical of many who produced
and sold 'whatever they could dispense wdth to luckier fellows'.^*
Not all Italian speakers who remained in Australia were, however, attracted to
making a living from the land. Among the 'farmers' were many who sought a future in
the commercial Ufe of the district, a reporter for the Daylesford Advertiser observing
on 22 October 1864: 'As we stmggle about we notice that there is a strong element in
ItaUan miners, Italian tradespeople and Italian professional men'. Nevertheless, it had
been the shift to farming and the taking up of land which had provided the stable
community base and a market for their goods and services. The cohesiveness of the
ItaUan-speaking population and the possibility of continuing such peasant practices as
bartering (of the kind noted in the Perini story) ensured local support. Indeed the
process of bartering served in Australia, as it had back in their vUlages, as a means to
'fronteggiare il male endemico dello privazioni e rinsaldare i vincoli collettivi'
(confront the evil endemic in deprivation and strengthen the collective chains). ^* The
Pozzi brothers were among the first ItaUan speakers to open a store in Hepbum and
they were soon foUowed by others. Dr Guscetti established his medical premises beside
the 'Switzeriand store' in Daylesford in 1856. Drawing upon their traditional skills, the
immigrants opened, among other ventures, variety-stores, wine bars, hotels,
blacksmiths and bakeries. Eagerly indeed did they enter into the commercial life of the
community, Bertelli noting:
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