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and wine. Once completed, these too would be hung to dry in the cellar, a room later
described by one of the daughters:
We had a lovely big cellar underneath the house. It ran the full length
of the house and lots of food and other things were stored there. It was
very nice and not at all damp. All the wine barrels were down there,
also long benches where the big dishes were laid out with milk to get
the cream. We did not have a separator. We just skimmed the cream
off There were racks to dry them [cheeses] on.^*
Food preparation and storage were demanding and time-consuming activities for the
Gaggionis who often worked together wdth other families to ease their workload.
Drawing upon their peasant tradition of inter-family cooperation, they prepared the
year's bullboars or wine supplies with the help of the Vaninas (cf above pp.283-284),
celebrating the conclusion of their labour with a 'pot night', when some of the wine or
freshly boUed bullboars would be consumed hot.
Items which the Gaggionis did not, or could not, produce on their farm were
acquired from other local traders, some of whom were their friends in the Italian-
speaking community. Various goods were purchased from Vincenzo Perini's store in
Spring Creek, as was pasta from Lucinis' macaroni factory a short distance away^'
(ref figure 10). Brothers Giacomo and Pietro Lucini (a family name mentioned several
times previously) had emigrated to Australia during the 1850s from Intra (ref figure 2)
in the Novara province of northem Italy. Linen and lace merchants, they had hoped to
pursue their trade in the Colony but the lack of a sizeable market had seen them
diversify into pasta production, opening a macaroni factory at 41 Lonsdale Street
Melboume. Later attracted to the goldfields of Jim Crow, where they had set up a
bakery in Spring Creek and then a hotel named The Roma, they had eventually
retumed to the pasta trade. Their new pasta factory (the converted Roma Hotel) was
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