the farm

Swiss Italian history of the farm

Two families

In the Hepburn district stone farmhouses like Lavandula's indicate some settlers were Italian-speakers  from around the lakes district in the north of Italy and from the southern Swiss canton of Ticino.

In 1860 Aquilino Tinetti followed his brother Andrea to the goldfields north of Daylesford, called Jim Crow. From the mid-1850s, on their miner's rights blocks, many men combined mining and self sufficiency, keeping animals on a town/goldfields common. But by 1860 the Victorian government was offering smallholdings of land to encourage settlement here of former gold seekers and goldfields businessmen/women. Aquilino established his farm on the hills and creek flats of Shepherds Flat, then returned to Biasca to farewell his family and to marry Maria Caprioli. Living among 2500 other Italian-speaking residents, they had thirteen children. Through changing dairying technology, floods and bushfire four generations of the Tinetti family continued to the present, now running Cricket Willow. 

Carol White was a city girl who yearned to bring up her boys in the country. Twenty years ago she saw an auction sign that changed her life. Shepdale consisted of three Italian-built golden stone buildings that suggested to her that she could live in rural Australia but it would feel like Europe! She restored the beautiful random stone buildings, planted a European kitchen garden and trialled lavender. Now the boys have grown and her beautiful 100-acre farm is open daily, growing lavender, olives and grapes, all of which is harvested and processed for use on the property.

Swiss and Italians

Sophie, the wife of Victoria’s first governor, was from Neufchatel in Switzerland, so Governor LaTrobe, and the Swiss Consul in Sydney, Louis Chapalay, encouraged French Swiss to emigrate here and start our wine industry in Geelong and the Yarra Valley.  However, the settlers of Lavandula were Swiss Italians. Their earliest compatriots were stonemasons working on Melbourne's earliest buildings.

The 1850s were tough in Italy and Switzerland with bad weather causing crop failures and food shortages. Political struggles that meant trade bans that prevented men going as usual to earn income in other countries. There were years of political and social unrest as republicans in the three Italian states fought for a united Italian nation. Then came the news of gold to be found in California and in Victoria.

Within a 15-year period, and often with financial support from the commune (local government), neighbours or the church, about 2500 came to the gold bearing district of Hepburn Springs.

The Jim Crow goldfields were cold and wet in winter, hot and dusty through summer. Digging for gold was hard work, familiar food was at first scarce and expensive. Later arrivals worked in cooperatives, with small-scale farming on the side. Many continued part-time in the mining business all their lives, as miners, carters, wood splitters.

In Daylesford, Hepburn Springs and Eganstown some opened a grocery, a bakery or a pasta manufactory, or ran a wine bar or hotel where they could meet compatriots to talk politics and play the music and pastimes of their homeland.

Smallholders, winemakers, dairymen and bakers, pasta- and sausage-makers; these Swiss and Italians were from the mountains and knew how to grow food in difficult soil and a cold climate. Traditionally experienced in quarrying and building with stone, many were successful as miners or stonemasons. The food they produced included macaroni, butter, cheese and airdried meat that they marketed to the miners. One of the traditional foods handed down the generations is a strongly flavoured Italian sausage, luganighe, now called the bullboar.

The Victorian 1862 Land Act encouraged gold seekers to settle on small properties, and to grow food. By far the most successful was dairying and grape-growing (though others tried olives, hops, oranges, almonds, silkworms, mustard, hemp and tobacco), together with special willows from which they made their baskets. The 1880 International Exhibition in Melbourne provided the opportunity to test local dairy products and wine against world competition. The climate in southern Australia was similar to the premium wine-growing areas of Europe. There were high hopes that Australia would “take its rightful place among the first wine-producing countries of the world.” Many grape plantings were varieties already known in Europe, but the smallholders brought with them what was familiar. By 1890 there were 500 hectares in vines in the greater Bendigo district, though within 10 years most was pulled out to make way for meat/wool sheep.

These Italian-speakers also noticed the district's many different mineral water springs, acknowledging its therapeutic qualities; by 1863 they had formed a committee to work with the government to protect mineral water from gold mining sludge, and to create public reserves that would keep the springs in public hands forever. Today 80% of Australia’s mineral water springs are in the district around Hepburn Springs.

The Swiss/Italians were among the prominent and respected citizens of Hepburn Springs, their names are still visible in the phone book today, and in the little cemeteries of the district. Lavandula perpetuates many aspects of their European farmstead life, and they are honoured at the
Hepburn Springs Swiss Italian Festa  in October.