We are happy to publish this letter that Prof. Desmond O'Connor of Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia, recently sent to Prof. Nicola Frammartino. Prof. Frammartino has asked us to publish it in order to seek the cooperation of Cauloniese in the world who might be able to supply personal accounts of any kind that have involved their own families.

Anyone who is able to supply information and/or materials is asked to send an email to Prof. O'Connor (Desmond.OConnor@flinders.edu.au), to Daniela
Rose (daniela.rose@flinders.edu.au) and to our staff  (info@caulonia2000.it).

All material received will be published on these pages.

Thank you for your assistance.

Dear friends,

I hope that your research on the history of Caulonia and on the migration of Cauloniese is proceeding well. Your web site is very attractive and contains a lot of useful information.

I believe that Roy Fazzalari has spoken to you about one of my students, Mrs Daniela Rose, who has chosen as the topic of her Honours thesis the history of the settlement in Adelaide, South Australia, of migrants from Caulonia. Daniela, who is also a tutor in our Department of Languages, recently began her research under my guidance. Nick and Roy Fazzalari would like Daniela, once she completes her thesis at the end of 2002, to prepare a volume on the Cauloniese in South Australia in time for the 50th anniversary of the celebration in Adelaide of the Feast of St Hilarion,
that is, in 2005.

Daniela and I are convinced that the research on migrants from Caulonia who today live in Adelaide needs to be seen in broad terms:- in the context of the emigration of Cauloniese to Adelaide and to Australia, as well as to other overseas destinations, both before and after the second world war; in relation to those Cauloniese migrants who, after living and working in South Australia for some years, left Adelaide and returned permanently to Caulonia, or subsequently settled elsewhere in Italy; in the links that were made in the 1950s and the 1960s, and the connections that are maintained today, between the people and town of Caulonia and the Cauloniese who live in Adelaide.

For these reasons it would be most useful to:

• trace people who presently live in Caulonia and who have preserved letters posted to them from Australia in the decades 1950-1970 by relatives and friends from Caulonia who had migrated to Adelaide in those years. From these letters, which are important historical documents in their own right, could be extracted, with the permission of their owners, the descriptive accounts (not the personal and private information) of the experiences of Cauloniese who had settled in Adelaide at that time;
  
• trace Cauloniese who have preserved photographs taken in Adelaide or in Caulonia in the decades after the war, which give some picture of the life and experiences of their fellow-Cauloniese who had migrated to Australia. With the permission of their owners these photographs could be copied for the purpose of preparing a photographic exhibition or an historical photograph album;
  
• trace Cauloniese who have returned permanently to Italy from Adelaide.These return migrants could be interviewed in order to obtain an account of their life experiences during the years that they lived in Adelaide. These interviews could be conducted by Daniela Rose, since during July or August this year she intends to spend a week or so in Caulonia in order to collect this kind of data.

Could you help us to obtain the information that we need? We would need to know who in Caulonia has, or had, relatives or acquaintances in Adelaide, so as to find out if they have preserved letters
and/or photographs. We would also like to trace those migrants from Caulonia who lived for some time in Adelaide and who later on returned permanently to Caulonia.

  ....................

I hope that I am not putting you to too much trouble. I take this opportunity to wish all of you a very happy 2002.

Kind regards,
Desmond O'Connor
14.1.2002