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CALIGARI
While the Gervasonis have left historians wdth many clues as to their existence
and life-style at Yandoit, fewer details are known of the Caligari family who settled at
Eastem Hill (Eganstown) in the 1860s. Today the family's descendants have all moved
away from the district, leaving only their headstones (in the Eganstovm Cemetery) as
tangible evidence of their presence in the area. Antonio Caligari emigrated to the
Colony of Victoria from Someo in Ticino in 1861,* later to be joined by his two
brothers Giacomo and Battista. Bom among the 'huddle of blue-grey stone houses in
the rich green foothills of steep, snow-capped mountains',^ which today characterise
Someo, they had grown up wdth members of the Righetti and Morganti families, who,
it wiU be recalled, also emigrated to Australia. Small and isolated, the 'old main street
three, perhaps four metres wide, hedged by two storey houses with whitewashed
facades and dark trims',' the village encouraged tight kinship and community networks
so that when four members of the Righetti clan (relatives of the Caligaris) and three of
the Morgantis decided to emigrate to the Colony in the mid 1850s, the impact on its
population was considerable. Not only the Caligaris, but other young men of the
village, were persuaded to follow, their enthusiasm heightened by the stories of those
returning ~ stories often exaggerated by men wishing to enhance their adventures for
their fiiends or justify their departures to their families. Not long after Battista Righetti
had repatriated in 1857, eighteen year old Giacomo Caligari boarded the Herald at
Liverpool bound for Australia."* Someo's population fell from 633 in 1850 to 560 in
1860* and, while the number of departures began to taper off over the next decade, it
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