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stmggled to preserve important aspects of their culture and to retain their
independence as a non-English-speaking commuruty. Despite the dominating influence
of the Anglo-Cehic population, they had successfully established homes, farms,
busmesses and a way of Ufe which reflected their pre-Australian backgrounds. They
had drawn upon their skills as farmers and labourers to maximise use of limited
resources and to set up powerful support networks. They had become a significant
presence in the business world — their public face to the Australian community ~ and
had contributed to the social life of the district through their dances and parties. They
had also taken an active role in community activities and organisations and had
performed many philanthropical deeds. They had demonstrated that a non-English-
speaking culture could successfully establish itself within an Anglo-Cehic environment
whhout forsaking its own identity.
Even after their deaths there remained in the Daylesford district tangible
evidence of the Italian speakers' former presence and influence: the homes which they
had named Gordevio (cf above p.3 52) or Biasca (cf above p.278) in memory of their
villages; the places and street names which recalled where families had lived (Italian
HiU, Morganti's Road, Borsa Avenue); the newspaper articles which recorded their
participation in local events (including a dramatic performance of 'WiUiam Tell', cf
above p.218) and the names of gold mines which revealed their Swiss-Italian ties
(SpiUaci's Tunnel, the Florence and Garibaldi Mines, cf above pp.237). Also left to
posterity were their guest houses and hotels ~ Bellinzona, Locarno and The Swiss
Mountain Hotel ~ which had been taken over by their offspring and operated into the
next century. By the 1990s this evidence linked Italian speakers, not only to the past,
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