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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2022-05-03 Daily Xml
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History Month

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL (Mawson) (17:47): Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I congratulate you on your appointment to this very important role in the parliament of South Australia.

May is History Month in South Australia, which is one of my favourite times of the year, when we get out and learn more about our local area and really do the deep dive into why we are what we are in our local area. History Month and the History Festival celebrate Indigenous history around South Australia as well as the history that has been forged since European settlement in the 1830s.

On Sunday 1 May, I was lucky enough to be at Myponga for a History Month special occasion organised by the Yankalilla historical society about the dairy industry around Myponga. Anyone who likes good milk knows the best milk in the world is Fleurieu Milk. That, of course, is based in Myponga. It was started by some very well-known local families and has grown from strength to strength under the stewardship of general manager Nick Hutchinson, who has done a great job.

I got to open the festival, which had as its guest speaker Peter Whitford, a long-time farmer in the area, who gave a magnificent speech about farming over the past seven or eight decades. He remembers from being a young fella hand milking right through to building his stud and going overseas to look at dairy cattle operations over there. Of course, Peter went on to be the Mayor of Yankalilla and one of the absolute highest standard citizens that we have in the Yankalilla council area.

I got to talk about my dad's role as a stock agent for buying and selling dairy cattle on the Fleurieu Peninsula, which is what he did from 1976, when we moved up to Adelaide from our own dairy farm town in Glencoe in the South-East, in between Millicent and Mount Gambier.

It was great because we had moved to the city, myself and mum and dad and my two sisters, yet we still had this great connection with farming communities that were not too far away. I remember as an 11 year old going down to Myponga and Hindmarsh Tiers and the one family who really stood out, and I mentioned this on Sunday, was the Mignanelli family.

I came from a place where multiculturalism meant that you were either Irish, Scottish, Welsh or English, and coming across Italian families for the first time in the mid-seventies was a real eye-opener for me. We got invited along to baptisms, first communions, confirmations and weddings. Putting ham next to rockmelon, you were thinking, 'This is a crazy idea,' and then you ate it and said, 'This makes sense.' I remember the first time I ate ravioli. I said, 'What are these little things?' I was 11 and I was hooked. I have loved Italian food since those days. They were very formative days for me and for so many other people who benefited from the migration of people who fled post World War II Europe and the conflicts they had, like the Mignanelli family who came here from Italy.

I want to thank Merilyn McLaren who organised the display and the speakers for Sunday because it was a tremendous tribute to the dairy community in Myponga. But it is one of just 34 events that are going to be rolled out over the next month by the Yankalilla historical society. Every second year they have a history festival in the Yankalilla District Council area. There are events on from Myponga all the way down to Cape Jervis. They missed out two years ago because of COVID, when so many things were cancelled.

In 2018 when they had it, I went to Delamere, Inman Valley, Cape Jervis, Yankalilla, Normanville and Myponga to all these different events and I learnt so much about an area that had just come into my electorate at that 2018 election. I encourage everyone to get online and find out what is happening, or get your hands on the South Australia's History Festival guide. If you go through it, there is a special section on the Fleurieu Peninsula events. There are 34 events that I have counted.

We also have some in the Onkaparinga council area around Willunga. Willunga is one of the most important historical towns in South Australia and they have a lot of great talks there as well. Of course, we look at the Slate Museum and other wonderful historical sites in Willunga. I encourage everyone to get out, get connected with the history of your local area and enjoy the South Australian history festival and all that is great about South Australia.

Sitting extended beyond 18:00 on motion of Hon. A. Koutsantonis.

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