Mihno Mourtoulakis (b. 1927 Skepasto, Thessaloniki, Greece)

Date of birth: 23 March 1927

Place of birth: Skepasto, province of Thessaloniki, Macedonia

Arrived in Australia: 7 October 1966

Occupation: Factory Worker

I was born in the village of Skepasto, in the province of Thessaloniki. Our village is a very small village. It had about 150 houses then. It’s at the foot of the mountain. When the sun rises it takes half an hour to reach the upper part of the village. The village is situated in a good place – it has the fields in front and we are at the back part of the village. It is very nice. There is public transport to Thessaloniki three times a  day. The work was labouring work. We worked on the land, cultivating tobacco. Whoever had a lot of land worked and the harvest was good. We didn’t have land of our own, and were forced to work like slaves.

This photograph was taken in February of 1944 in my village, Skepasto, in front of our house when I was a teenager. I am on the left of the photograph and next to me is my cousin Smaro. The little boy is my brother. Behind our house you can see a mountain and because of this mountain my village was named Skepasto. There is a story behind the name of my village and it is as follows: some time ago when the village was inhabited by the Turks it was called Soulouvo. However later the name of my village was changed to Skepasto (1) because the mountain almost covers the village. I just realised that I forgot the sheep in the photograph. That sheep was the family’s pet, and it used to follow me everywhere I went.

In 1947 my village was burnt down during the course of the Civil War (2). All of us had to go and live in tents that were set up in Langada. I lived in a tent with the rest of my family for six months. In the photograph you can see me with other people from my village in front of the tent that was our home for six months. We were like refugees in our own country. We lost our homes and most of our possessions.

After living in the tents for six months at Langada we went to live with our relatives in Kitros. Since my family didn’t stay on at Langada with the other fellow villagers, the officials wanted to know how many members were in the family so we could continue getting the assistance they were giving us while we were living in the tents at Langada. This family photograph was taken and sent to the officials.

I remember the photograph was taken in front of my uncle’s house in Kitros. In the back row you can see from left to right my brother Apostolos, me next to him, and my sister Yiannoula. In the front row from left to right again you can see my father George Touloupas sitting down, my mother Smaro and between my parents is my little sister Irene. Next to my mother stands my brother Stelios. I have another sister who isn’t in the photograph because she was married and had a family of her own.

We lived in Kitros for almost a year. I attended school to learn pattern cutting and sewing. The photograph is from my sewing school. I am standing on the right behind the table. The teacher is standing next to me on my left hand side and there are two other students. The little girl is my cousin.

In 1948 we returned to the village once our houses were rebuilt. Life continued as before. The sewing I had learned at Kitros was very useful to me. I had a sewing machine and I worked in the village and with the money I made, I supported the family. It was very hard because we didn’t have our own land. The land belonged to our parents and while our parents were still alive, if they chose to they would gives us enough to live on. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t. You worked on your parents’ land to make a living and when they got angry with you they said, “I won’t give you anything, go elsewhere to live’. We were forced to go and work elsewhere. My husband worked for six months in another village and with the money we bought an ox and a cow. I was also working as a weaver. Later, my husband returned and began working in the village again. That’s how ourr own family started.

When you work in the fields naturally it is hard. For example we had to begin in October by sowing the wheat. The man worked continuously; he would get up in the morning at three oc’clock to get the seeds ready to go and plough the fields and sow the seeds. If the weather was good it was OK, but if the weather was not good he had to come back.

We did the same with the tobacco; we planted the tobacco seed and then we waited in suspense to see whether it was going to hail because it would destroy the plants. After we planted the tobacco plants in the fields, they were sometimes prone to disease so we had to quickly sprinkle them to save them. We waited in suspense until all the tobacco was picked and sold. In the end, we gathered a lot of tobacco but when the tobacco was cleaned there was not much left [because most of it was poor quality] and we were worried about whether it was going to be bought or not. The first time I cultivated tobacco, I gathered about 100 pounds. I was pregnant that year, and as my husband was working in another area, I had to gather the tobacco alone. My son was born in August. The tobacco was not bought that year; they asked for it three years later. Lucky for us we didn’t burn it – imagine having to pay a fine for your own produce.

It was hard work, having to get up at three o’clock in the morning and work all night getting only three hours of sleep. That’s the lovely life we used to have. We coudn’t make a living there because we didn’t have our own land. We had to rent from others to make a living. We had to leave for a better way of life, and we decided to migrate here. But even here luck didn’t help us at all.

The first time we decided to migrate was in ’55, but we didn’t have a chance to make an application, because migration to Australia stopped. When migration was re-opened in ’65 we made an application and came here in ’66. We arrived here on the 7th October. We worked well until my husband had the accident at work. Since my husband had the accident, we haven’t seen a bright day. It was very hard, because we had just bought a house and we to pay it off. I used to work from seven o’clock in the morning to seven o’clock at night to make ends meet.

I was confronting everything alone, and I used to come home from work at nights to find him crying outside. I used to take him by the hand to go out. For almost four years I was looking after him continuously. I used to take him to the toilet, give him a bath and take him outside for walks. I cannot complain about my children. If it wasn’t for my son, we would have faced many hardships. Since the age of fifteen he has worked to look after us. He worked as an apprentice, he worked at the market and at a milkbar, to provide us with food. Later when he had a steady job he used to pay the rent and provide us with everything else we needed. We went through hard years, and lots of depression, but you can’t give up. With courage we learned to struggle for survival.

1 Skepasto – covered

2 There was Civil War in Greece between 1946 and 1949

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.