From October 19-23, the community of Hepburn Springs will come together for this year’s Swiss & Italian Festa, embracing the strong cultural roots of the region’s earlier settlers.
As part of the annual festivities, the Lavandula Swiss Italian Farm in neighbouring Shepherds Flat will hold two events to celebrate the coming of the new season just as its original owners would have.
Lavandula will come alive during La Primavera Festival on October 23, showcasing local food, wine and handicrafts, and treating guests to the best of Italian song and dance.
Performer Mara Ripani will open the festival by hosting a traditional storytelling event exploring the life of the farm’s founders over a four-course meal on October 21.
Mara, who migrated from Le Marche to settle in Ballarat as a nine-year-old, has recently begun using her passion for singing as an avenue to reflect on her own heritage.
“I’ve been a performer and singer for a long time, and lately I’ve started to perform Italian songs and go back to my roots exploring Italian culture more in detail,” Mara says.
In engaging with her Italian background, Mara has come to learn the story of around 2000 Swiss-Italians who migrated to regional Victoria in the 1850s.
These migrants moved to Hepburn Springs and the surrounding districts during the gold rush due to an economic embargo between Switzerland and Italy at the time.
One of the most affected areas was the Italian-speaking Swiss canton of Ticino, and a combination of the embargo, a potato blight and a loss of livestock resulted in the migration of many impoverished Ticinesi people in search of a better life.
While many of the men who flocked to Victoria were skilled tradesmen, most of them were constrained to working in the goldfields as job opportunities were hard to come by for new arrivals.
One young migrant who came to call the Victorian countryside home was Aquilino Tinetti.
As land became available through government support, Aquilino purchased a property at Shepherds Flat where he established a dairy farm and a humble stone cottage on site.
Once Aquilino had settled and built his dairy business, he made the long voyage back to Ticino to marry a 19-year-old girl by the name of Maria Capriroli.
Aquilino then returned to Shepherds Flat flanked by his new wife, and together they went on to raise not one or two, but 13 children!
“Maria lived on well into her eighties and was pregnant for about 20 years of her life, giving birth every one to two years...it was quite a feat,” Mara laughs.
Aquilino and Maria raised their children on the farm, while all 15 of them slept in the only suitable room: the attic.
The family also provided very basic accommodation for people travelling through, preparing meals from the designated cookhouse which was detached from the main house, and which later served as a post office.
Fast-forward over a hundred years, and the Tinetti’s home still exists today; Lavandula owner Carol White has restored the property to its former splendour.
Carol has invested significant time and energy into continuing the Tinetti’s legacy, travelling to Ticino three times to collect photos and documents, meet relatives of Aquilino and Maria and to trace their migrant journey to Australia.
“It’s very much about celebrating the history of the buildings; in celebrating their history here, they’re intrinsically linked to the people who built them,” Mara says.
“Without that story they’re just buildings...they’re beautiful buildings, but it’s the story of the Tinetti family and their life here that brings life to this site.”
Over a century later, the heritage of the farm and the story of its original settlers are still celebrated within the wider community, while the strong Swiss-Italian influence within the surrounding townships is as present as ever.
The Hepburn Springs Swiss & Italian Festa allows both the community and visitors to enjoy the area’s vibrant history, and the way that migrants – particularly Swiss-Italian families – have shaped the region in their own special way.
“The Festa is a way of keeping the past alive and recognising the beauty that’s found in Daylesford and the area largely due to that migration,” Mara says.
“It’s a European beauty that’s been layered onto the landscape which was already extremely beautiful under the management of the original Indigenous people.”
