Name Of Mine On Which Last Employed
Mountain Queen GM, Marvel Loch, Western Australia

Place Of Burial
Marvel Loch Cemetery, Western Australia

Submitted by
David McMillan - Volunteer, and Anna Malmgren, Great Niece of Guiseppe Natle Della Bosca.

District
Marvel Loch

Cause of Death
Mine Accidents

Other Information
By Anna Malmgren, Great Niece of Guiseppe Natle Della Bosca -
My great uncle, Giuseppe Della Bosca, died in a fall of earth in the Mountain Queen Gold Mine near Marvel Loch on 17 February 1913. He is buried in the cemetery there. We visited it in September; such a desolate, isolated place for a young boy from the other side of the world. He had arrived in WA two years earlier, as an 18 year old, from his small village in the Italian Alps. What a contrast he must have found here. Apparently, his was the first death in this mine. Adding to the tragedy of his death for his family, my grandfather, a 17 year old, was on his way to join his older brother, when the accident occurred. He arrived on 1 April 1913, with no English, a gold sovereign his father had given him, and no one to meet him.

Yet, like so many of our early settlers, he made a life here, worked hard (on the mines, but never going underground. (I still have his Holman Hoist licence). He stayed in WA for nine years, moving from Southern Cross, to Laverton and Gwalia, before leaving for Mount Morgan, and finally Victoria. I also have letters from his parents, written when they found out about the death of their eldest son. His mother's grief is palpable. We often think of the hardships our early Australians encountered, but how difficult it must have been for parents to send their sons and daughters to the other side of the world, knowing they would never see them again. My poor great grandmother lost four of her sons to Australia, and her only daughter to Argentina. Life offered few chances in the small village in the Alps, where they lived. The year after his death his mother had another child and called it Natale.