The idea of a joint ESO / Australia meeting on the large number of exciting new facilities that are, or will soon be, available tihne southern hemisphere arose quite naturally. In the optical and the near-infrared, the Very Large Telescope (VLT) will soon be operational. In the radio, the Australia Telescope Com­ pact Array is going to be upgraded to higher frequencies (20 and 100 GHz), together with an improvement in very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) facil­ ities. Other major facilities, such as the Large Millimetre Array and the lkT are being planned. Moreover, new deep surveys are underway in the southern hemi­ sphere: the southern Hubble Deep Field, the ESO Imaging Survey (BIS), pan­ oramic deep surveys with the UK Schmidt telescope, and the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) 2dF galaxy/QSO redshift survey in the optical; and the Parkes multibeam HI survey and Molonglo Observatory Synthesis Telescope (MOST) Wide Field continuum survey at radio wavelengths. With all these new facilities, important progress will be made regarding important issues such as the large­ scale structure of the universe, the very early universe and the associated first epoch of galaxy formation. The generation of large databases, and the oppor­ tunity for sensitive follow-up observations in complementary wavebands, mean that coordinated radio, infrared and optical projects in the southern hemisphere are likely to become increasingly attractive and important.