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from the purely practical features of a 'peasant' home to one presuming increased
leisure time for its owners. It enabled the Gervasoni house to become an even greater
focus for family and community gatherings, Armie, who had leamed to cook the foods
which her husband enjoyed, placing large bowls of macaroni in the centre of the
kitchen table from which everyone helped themselves. Later the party would move to
the 'baUroom' where the dancing would begin; sometimes presided over by the eldest
son Battista acting as Master of Ceremonies, they were more formal affairs than the
spontaneous family and community celebrations of Carlo's past and reflected the
family's increased social status. Other renovations made at this time included a new
dairy, wash-house and the addition of a verandah. The large bread oven was rebuilt
into the left side of the near three metre high chimney and an underground 90,000 litre
tank - a brick-Uned pit wdth domed cover ~ sunk into the ground. The dairy provided
space for laying out up to 100 dishes of milk for skimming the cream. Most of the milk
was made into cheese ~ ItaUan cheese made from half new milk and half skim milk and
English cheese made from all new milk ~ all the work being done by hand.
Apart from dances and parties in their 'banfoom', the Gervasonis passed their
leisure tune playing traditional games, such as bocce — Uke other families in the
district, owning their own bocce lawn. Some of the hand-carved and smoothly rasped
wooden bocce balls have survived in the cellars of the old homes of the district.
Playing their fiiendly matches, families would sometimes have to modify the game
mles to accommodate the Umitations of their surrounds, the Invemizzi family, for
example, not permitting anyone to move a ball once it had landed in the wheelbarrow.
From the opening instmction 'three then shoot,'* sometimes heard about the Yandoit
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