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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2010-10-26 Daily Xml
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ITALIAN MIGRATION

Mrs GERAGHTY (Torrens) (15:29): On the 17th of this month I had the great pleasure of launching the book Terra lasci, terra trovi:—a very rough translation of which means 'the land left behind, the land found'—from Molinara to Adelaide at the Molinara Social and Sports Club at Windsor Gardens. The book is the history of migration of people from the village of Molinara in Italy to Adelaide, and, as I said at the launch, I was very pleased to see that it is already listed in the catalogue of the National Library.

In November of last year, the club approached me about this project that they were undertaking to produce a history of the migration of Italians from the town of Molinara to Adelaide. They were seeking some financial support, so I wrote to our Premier, Mike Rann, requesting some special assistance so that the club could undertake what I thought was a tremendously worthwhile project. I was extremely pleased when the Premier advised me that there was a grant of $4,000 to be given to the club to assist in the production of the book. I can see the member for Morialta nodding because I have to say that it is—

Mr Gardner interjecting:

Mrs GERAGHTY: Yes. It is truly an exceptionally excellent book, I think is one way of describing it. It is quite large and it is just beautiful. By way of some background, Molinara is a township of approximately 1,900 people in the province of Benevento in the Italian region of Campania. It is located about 80 kilometres north-east of Naples and about 20 kilometres north-east of Benevento. The book traces the history of migration from Molinara to Adelaide.

As we can imagine, in the post-World War II era, South Australians saw a significant inflow of migrants from Europe, and, quite truly, these migrants have enhanced our Australian culture with their traditions and customs. I have a great admiration for the migrants who left the security of their homeland to travel halfway across the world to start a new life here in Adelaide.

As a young girl at primary school, most of my friends were Italian because of the community around Croydon, where I lived. I recall the difficulty for a lot of their mothers, in particular, whose command of English was extremely limited because they were at home caring for the family. Communication was very difficult. Today we hop on the phone and chat away to people, send emails and all the rest of it, but in those days, of course, you would write a letter back home, it would take weeks to get there and then a long time for a response to come back.

Many of those people who came here at that time probably believed that they would never return to their homeland again, nor have the opportunity to see their families, so the loss of that contact and family support led to the creation of clubs such as the Molinara Social and Sports Club, which was established nearly 40 years ago to encourage the cultural, social and sporting activities of Italian migrants, particularly the Molinaresi community.

The club moved to its current rooms in Windsor Gardens in 1973, and they have made a great contribution, not just to my community but to the wider Italian community. They have a great commitment to enhancing the cultural knowledge of young members of their community, which is to be commended—it is very hard to engage younger people these days, as we all know.

Before I run out of time, I want to congratulate everyone involved in the book. As we have said before, it is absolutely fantastic. A special mention must go to Don Callisto, who is the convenor of the Molinara Club's Cultural Committee, and Don Longo, the editor, who has done a fantastic job under great duress at times.

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