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Fmgality and an ingenious use of resources were the peasants'^* tools for
survival. They were able to buUd most things ~ bricks, nails, doors, fiimiture, shoes,
rope ~ or adapt their use to their needs. They were stonemasons, carpenters,
blacksmiths, farmers and hunters, whose knowledge had been passed dovm through
generations of viUage life. For them, being economical meant using all of a farm
animal: milking a cow, eating its flesh, tanning its skin. They could dry rabbh and hare
skins, deliver a calf and graft trees. They knew how to re-use everything a second and
third time, 'Rooted to a little patch of ground to which he must adapt himself', the
peasant made his home a work-place and his work-place a home,^^ The Italian-
speaking immigrants drew upon these same attributes of economy and pragmatism to
help them survive in Australia, one of their greatest assets being a work-force
composed almost entirely of family members.
Essential to the successfiil operation of this kind of household was a cheap and
ready work-force, none being more appropriate than the family members themselves.
It was important for women to produce large numbers of offspring, especially since
Ulnesses such as diphtheria and tuberculosis often brought them to early deaths. Of the
four infants Swiss settler Giuditta Guscetti produced in Australia, not one survived
beyond childhood. Life was hard for the women of the Colony, many spending the
greater part of their child-bearing years pregnant (Giuditta Guscetti being so virtually
for four continuous years) and undergoing difficuh and dangerous births. Illnesses,
such as mastitis (recall the Tomasetti story), would often be traumatic. Because the
household or family was the cmcial economic unit, women also made a vital
contribution to its productive capacity, their work sometimes making the difference
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