Download (14Mb) - VUIR - Victoria University

streets, it would seem that English speakers were invited to participate in these
activities ~ by so doing helping to narrow the cultural divide separating Australia's
ethnic groups. Another pastime, generally enjoyed by only the men, was the playing of
traditional card games, the women frequently working in the evenings to the animated
shouts of Italian numbers. The Gervasonis' Italian-speaking friends included many
who had settled about Yandoit: in a nearby stone cottage (which many years later was
occupied by Carlo's descendants) lived the Invemizzis and down the road was the
Lombard-style home, stone stables and dairy Antonio Gervasoni had built in 1874 (ref
figure 12). Also in the area was the two-storey stone house and farm buildings of
Antonio Tognolini (original title in the name of A. Tognolini, A. Milesi, and J.
Gamboni) (ref figure 14). This home comprised a typical Bergamask-style chimney
designed to expose a large number of canals to the wind and ensure an efficient draft
during the cold winter months'* (ref figure 12). Tognolini, or 'Togs' as he was
affectionately known, was a charcoal burner who had emigrated to Australia from
Lombardy. Purchasing around seven hectares in the area knovm as American Gully
(ref figure 12) he had, like Carlo, lived in a temporary make-shift hut while waiting for
his home to be built. When, in the twentieth century, new owners renovated his
two-storey bam, rather than the original house, as the area in which they would live, it
suggested the solid constmction of the property's productive areas ~ and the priorities
of the Italian speakers in estabUshing their farms. The district of Yandoit, with its
parties, weekend bocce matches, special foods and home-made wines, provided
members of the wider Australian community with experience of a small but
recognisable Italian-speaking enclave.
330