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Upon his arrival in England, Isidoro worked for two years in a London grocery
shop. In 1889, when he was 25 years old and one year after the Vanzettas had
departed for Jim Crow, he boarded the Holdenburg bound for Australia.'* He went
directly to Jim Crow where he was greeted by his Biascan compatriots and given
accommodation in the home of Giuseppa Vanina, Like most new arrivals, he sought
work in the goldfields, finding employment at Franklinford and possibly wdth the
Vanzettas on their water battery on Spring Creek. He later worked on mines, such as
the Golden Spring at Womens Gully outside Daylesford as a woodcutter, this still
being a popular occupation among Italian speakers. The deep underground mines of
Daylesford were large consumers of timber and the supply to mines a major industry.
In a single twelve month period, the Band of Hope mine in Ballarat, for example,
consumed '65,000 props, 360,000 laths, 500,000 feet of other savm timber and 2,600
tonnes of fire wood' to generate steam power.* While the bulk of timber to line the
underground shafts and tunnels was suppUed by large savmiills, single splitters,
working in two or three-man teams to fell the logs, cut them to required lengths with a
cross-saw and split the lengths by hand with wedges and splitting knives to make
props, laths or roofing shingles, were an important source of labour. Isidoro would
have been assisted into the industry with the help of his compatriots, benefiting from
their years of experience and familiarity wdth Australia.
Isidoro worked in a variety of occupations before settling into his familiar
occupation as a dairy farmer. This decision may have coincided wdth his marriage in
1891 to Caterina Adelina Tinetti, the daughter of an Italian-speaking couple living at
nearby Shepherds Flat* It will be recalled (see Milesi section) that Caterina's father
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