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proved the ideal setting for their homes. Stefano set to work building a large seven-
roomed weatherboard house vnth a solid underground cellar and a verandah which
looked out over the largely unpopulated Daylesford landscape. As most of the Pozzi
children were too young to contribute to the physical work, Stefano employed a
number of people to help establish the property, including a Chinese gardener who
lived in a cottage opposite. One story which persists up to the present relates how
Stefano also employed a man with no legs, who worked the garden while pushing
himself around on a small wheeled trolley*^ ~ the point of the story seeming to be that
Stefano's experience as an immigrant made him sympathetic to those whom other
emplyees may not have wanted to hire. The clearing of the property is reported to
have taken the labour of six men working six months. Stefano planted a magnificent
garden, which according to visitors to his home tovra in Valle Maggia in the 1880s,
contained the same flower varieties ~ camellias and wisterias ~ as had been planted in
Giumaglio. He planted exotic trees including a rare New Zealand Oak, grape-vines,
fiiiit trees and a vegetable garden.^" Some of the seeds for these plants many have
come from Ticino, as had those for the garden at Hepbum; Giacomina, who had talked
of sending seeds to her family in Ticino, is also Hkely to have acquired seeds in this
way.*^ Stefano's garden was skilfully landscaped vsith paths made from the local rock
and a walk-through area over which the vines grew, again translating a cultural
pattern. Around the house he built a high wall of quartz which had been extracted
from his mine and which was embedded with small pieces of gold; it was a small show
of ostentation which lasted only until gold thieves arrived. To extend the available
fanning land, Stefano also worked a block belonging to Albino Paganetti in nearby
Patterson Street.
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