For some the prospect of a family reunion would have people faking illnesses or purposely missing flights.
But for this family, it’s a little bit different.
Documented as one of the earliest and most prolific Greek migrant families in Darwin, the Haritos family is now organising a mammoth reunion to mark the 100 year anniversary of their grandfather’s arrival to the Northern Territory.
Eustratios Haritos settled in Darwin in 1915 and had eight children, from which sprung a whole Greek empire.
The family has had a hand in everything from pearl diving, salt works and crocodile hunting, as they’ve spread far and wide around the Northern Territory and Australia.
Now the challenge is to rustle every living relative back to Darwin for a colossal reunion in 2015.
Michael Anthony Haritos has taken charge of the proceedings, and has teed up some impressive activities.
The family will have a stall at the annual Darwin Greek Glendi in June, showing off some amazing old photos of the family and giving everyone a bit of a history lesson at the same time.
Buses have been hired to take the family on a guided tour of grandfather Eustratios’ old haunts.
It’s going to be a big weekend for the family.
Adrienne Haritos is coming up from Canberra and says the bus trip is going to include some spots most members of the family will remember.
“We’re going to do a trip around Darwin in a bus, just pointing out a few sites that might not exist in the same way anymore because the town’s grown a lot, but we’ll have a look at the salt pan and we’ll go out to the harbour,” she tells Neos Kosmos.
“The family had an old tin hut on the harbour where the family used to stay recreationally and we’ll visit that on the harbour trip as well.”
The Haritos family created a lot of firsts for the Greek community of Darwin.
Eustratios is thought to be the first to have a traditional Greek wedding in the territory. Eustratios and his fiancé Eleni Harmanis had no choice but to ship a Greek priest from Perth to perform the service as no priest had settled in Darwin. Yet. Only a small influx of about 1,000 Greek migrants arrived in the city between 1914 and 1919 as they looked for work as WWI broke out.
Since it was such a rarity to have a Greek Orthodox priest at the time, Eustratios organise for his wedding to become a double wedding, with his friend piggybacking on the service, getting married to Eleni’s sister.
With a working knowledge of how to extract salt – something he learnt from his hometown of Moschonisi in Asia Minor – Eustratios started a salt pan business with fellow Greek migrants, John Sphakinakis and Dick Colivas to service the newly built meatworks.
Keeping close to the water, Eustratios made sure his eight children would embrace that Greek love of the sea and created a number of businesses linked to it.
The four Haritos boys fished, pearled and hunted crocodiles for their hides, as Eustratios shipped supplies to the small Aboriginal coastal communities of North Australia.
The Haritos family also established the barramundi trade down south and eventually kick-started the industry as they began exporting the fish to Melbourne in 1956.
As impressive a businessman as Eustratios was, he was a quiet man.
“Grandfather wasn’t a great talker, he was a hard worker, a sober kind of guy,” Adrienne Haritos says.
Quite different to his wife, Eleni.
“She worked hard in the heat of Darwin raising the children in the frontier town, establishing the family business and keeping chickens to sell the fresh eggs,” Adrienne remembers.
“A cheerful, loving lady.”
Amazingly, Eustratios invested a lot of time trying to tame Darwin’s icon, the crocodile, something his children immediately took on board.
One of his sons, George, kept a 13-foot crocodile in his backyard as a pet and even helped the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Phillip, shoot and skin a crocodile in the 1950s.
More than 100 family members have been contacted for the reunion and are set to arrive on June 6 2015. They’re in the process of booking a large hall to host the opening event.