Dr Madeleine Regan will be guest speaker at the Henley & Grange Historical Society’s September general meeting. Madeleine’s presentation is entitled:
Migrant family stories between the wars: An Italian market gardener community in Adelaide’s western suburbs
Madeleine will speak about a group of market gardeners who arrived in Adelaide in the late 1920s from the Veneto region in Italy. The group developed a strong community and identity in the western suburbs of Adelaide between the wars. She will talk about the collection of 65 oral history interviews recorded with family members, descendants of the first generation of market gardeners.
She will illustrate her presentation with photos and maps and audio clips from oral history interviews that provide an insight into the families who established their market gardens in the 1930s in the Kidman Park/Flinders Park area. Madeleine will explain the importance of land, family contribution to work, the impact of World War II on the community and changes that occurred as suburban development closed in on the market gardens.
Biographic Note
Madeleine Regan has undertaken oral history projects with migrant communities, educational organisations, local governments and family businesses in South Australia. She has deposited more than 120 oral histories in the State Library of SA. She completed a PhD at Flinders University in 2021 and currently holds Academic Status there.
Madeleine’s book, ‘I buy this piece of ground here’: An Italian market-gardener community in Adelaide, 1920s-1970s, was published earlier in 2025. Using oral histories with three generations, archival and published sources, the book examines the migration and settlement of a group of Italian families as market gardeners in the western suburbs from the 1930s. The period between the wars is a period of Australian migration history often overlooked in favour of post-World War II studies of mass migration and multiculturalism.
Photo of the two boys – Johnny and Romano Marchioro, on the family market garden, Frogmore Road, St James Park, c 1945. Photo by Lina Marchioro.