Date of birth: 21 January 1946
Place of birth: Sphendami, province of Ekaterini, Macedonia
Arrived in Australia: 21 January 1969
Occupation: Factory Worker
My village is quite big. It had 300 houses, but I don’t know about the number of citizens it has now. It has a big church which is near my house. My school, where I got my education, is quite big and is also near my house. What can I say – we left everything behind and came here. My father was a professional shoemaker, and he practised his trade in the village. We didn’t have much property of our own. We only had two acres of land that was allotted to my father when the land was divided. I remember my father telling me that he should have been allotted ten acres of land, but because he had a trade they allotted him two acres only. We managed to get by with only that.
There were four children, one brother and three sisters. My brother was serving in the army and when he finished his service, he went to the Ekplidi technical school in Thessaloniki for six months. Afterwards he migrated to Brazil, where he has been for the last 23 years and never returned. I haven’t seen him since then. We all got married and had our own families. My husband and I came here for five years, and we’ve been here ever since. The five years became ten, then fifteen and we are heading for seventeen years, and we still haven’t gone back.
I am ten years old in the photograph. The photograph was taken in 1956 in front of our house in Sphendami. Notice the sandals I am wearing – my father made them. We always wore the most beautiful shoes in the village.
I completed primary school and with excellent marks. My brother is the reason why I didn’t go on to high school. My brother told my father not to send me to high school in town, because I was going to get myself a boyfriend, and so my father avoided sending me. I wanted to go so much. All my friends and fellow female students went. They used to go to Aejinion by bus. A bus used to come in the morning and take them, and in the afternoon it used to bring them back.
I remember, when I was going to school, every Sunday I went to cooking classes with other girls from the village. The photograph is of the students who attended the cooking class. It was taken in 1960 and all the students are there. I am third in the second row, from right to left, the one with the long plait. My mother also sent me to learn sewing for two winters, but I didn’t like the work. Sewing used to irritate me. I also learned pattern cutting but I didn’t practise the trade, because I didn’t like it.
We (my family) rented land and cultivated tobacco. We used to cultivate tobacco on the land one year and following year we would cultivate wheat. My father was doing well as a shoemaker because our village was big. We didn’t lack anything in my family. We were living very comfortably in those days.
We all worked in the fields together. We used to get up early in the morning. We started work on the fields in March. We sowed the tobacco seeds and later we planted the tobacco plants in the fields. We used to hoe the tobacco and in July we began gathering and threading the tobacco. By the 14th of September all the work involving the tobacco was completed. It was hard work, it was tiring, very tiring. In the photograph I am on a tractor when we were ploughing the field to get it ready for the cultivation of tobacco.
I was engaged for three years, and when Savas returned from serving in the army we decided to get married. It was very hard for me because I was used to a different life at my home. There were seven people in Savas’ family and me extra made it eight people. I didn’t even want to get married and go into that household, because my father-in-law’s house was small with a large family. It was a big responsibility for me. Anyhow, we registered to go to Germany. My uncle, my mother’s brother, sponsored us, bu the sponsorship was cancelled. We were going to go to Germany under a contract. By contract, I mean that they were going to put me in a job they chose and I was obliged to take the job for a year even if it was rough.
In 1968 we decided to migrate to Australia. I can never forget the day we left the village. My father was crying and kept saying: ‘Where are you going? Where are you going?’ All our relatives and friends came to say good-bye to my husband’s uncle. He was so emotional he couldn’t say good-bye to me but only managed to say, ‘Daughter-in-law, where have you decided to go, we had a good life here’.
It was three o’clock in the afternoon when we arrived in town wth the tractor to catch the train. In the photograph you can see me on the left hugging my aunty Stella. Also in the photograph, you can see my husband Savas, and my mother-in-law who is holding my daughter Sophie. We waited two to three hours, at the railway station. Most of the people from the village came to see us off. My aunty Stella was crying, she didn’t want to let us go.
We came to Australia by ship, the ‘Patris’. It was winter and the weather was cold while we were travelling. In January of 1969 we disembarked at Port Melbourne. A friend of my brother’s was here. I had written to him and told him ‘Lazaro, we want to come to Australia’, and he had replied, ‘If you want to come, I will come and pick you up’. when we arrived at Port Melbourne and disembarked Lazaro was nowhere! Eventually he did come and he took us to his house. He looked after us for a week. My husband began working after two days, and Lazaro took him to where he was working. I spent a week, maybe two, I cannot remember, looking after my daughter until I found a babysitter to look after her while I went to work. We got very tired in that first period after we arrived, very tired.
When I found a babysitter to look after my child, I began work at a biscuit factory in South Melbourne. The work there was dreadful. I was not used to working in a factory. We were used to working in the fields where the work was ours and we had no one to push us around and to bother us. The factory job had a production line and the production line was dreadful. It wasn’t a heavy job but it was very quick and unbearable. we had to work quickly in order to keep up with the production line. I was new at the job and I didn’t know what to do. With my right hand I had to take the packet and with my left hand I had to count and put six biscuits inside the packet. If there was a broken biscuit I had to throw it out and replace it. We had a Greek woman for a boss. She was a fierce person and that’s why they must have made her a boss.
We left South Melbourne and came to brunswick to find better jobs and to be with friends. I have been working for fifteen years in my current job, with no problems whatsoever. I am very happy at this factory. I have a lot of freedom in this job. The factory makes socks. In the beginning I used to operate eight machines and now I operate thirty-two machines.
I don’t want to even think about the first factory. I got very tired in the first period after we arrived, but we are now living well. I cannot compare Australia to anything. It is a country that has offered us so much. We came here with only one suitcase, and we have our own home now, the children have grown up and we are educating them.
Source: ’1985. Brunswick City Council. For a better life we came’. Collected and edited by the Brunswick Oral History Project. Copies available for lending and sale at Moreland City Libraries (Brunswick) ph 9389 8600. Images taken after 1955 are available in the print publication. Original images available in exhibition boxes in storage at Brunswick Library.