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effects went up for sale; piled up outside and ready to be taken away, they belied the
enormous sacrifices and stmggles of their owners.
After moving to Melboume, Riva took up work as a govemess, but retumed to
Daylesford on occasions to visit her old family home. She was saddened by the sight
of her old bed which lay in the cellar and by the cameUia tree and New Zealand Oak
which her father had planted. All of these had bonded her with her childhood and her
father's life in Ticino. Stefano would have been comforted to know that she had
always considered her life with her father a happy one, recalling how he used to say at
the beginning of the month of May, 'How I wish I could take you to Switzerland. It is
so beautiful, everywhere with flowers growing vdld'.'" After only six years in
Melboume, her uncle Leonardo had died of acute diabetes in 1908. Valerio, his son,
had taken over his business in Fitzroy but had been killed at Gallipoli during the First
World War. Riva lived out her final years with one of her nieces and then later as a
permanent resident of the Royal Freemasons Home where she died. She had requested
that her ashes be scattered under the New Zealand Oak to reunite her with her
childhood but this wish was never granted. Of her brothers and sisters: Erina became
the mother of seven children, Violetta died at 89 years of age on 24 March 1969 and
Nilo moved to Sydney, married and produced two children. In Sydney, he opened a
restaurant named The Matterhom which proudly displayed the Swiss Flag on its roof
and the crests of various cantons on its interior walls. As a third generation Anglo-
Swiss, it was a tangible link with his Ticinese heritage, a conscious expression of
identification with an 'imagined' ethnic community over a long period of time.
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