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Category: Interviews »

Subject: Cultural Studies »

Michele Langfield on Italian farmers

Michele Langfield.

Historian Michele Langfield describes how Italian farmers were "scattered" among the mass of British farmer settlers in places like Shepparton so that there would be some farmers at least who knew about irrigation

Created:

unknown

Date Added:

26 March 2009

Source:

source not available

Format:

mov (Quicktime);

File size:

2.6 MB

Length:

01min01sec

Transcript

Langfield:

00:06

British people coming to Australia and being put on farms in Shepparton and Werribee, didn’t know anything about irrigation so what they wanted to do in the pre-war period, particularly in Victoria, was to bring a smattering of people who knew about irrigation and put them in amongst the British and some of these closer settlement areas. And there was a particular mission in 1911 by Elwood Mead (sp?) in Victoria, who was – he was one of the people who knew about water – irrigation and he went on a whole tour of Europe, selecting farmers to come as part of an assisted package to Victoria, in the pre World War 1 period. So they did want some Europeans to come and be sort of like, I suppose, mixed in with a larger number of British because they would know from places like the Poe Valley, how to conduct irrigation.

01:01

End transcript