Gypsies from Greece on a mission to help their Greek Australian ‘brothers’

The Greek community in Melbourne received two 'unusual' visitors from Greece.
Andrew Babikis, the president of the Panhellenic Cultural Association of Gypsies, the flagship organisation of gypsies in Greece - established in 1939 and based in the St Varvara suburb in Athens - and the secretary of aforementioned association, Athanasios Demetriou. Both are in Melbourne on a mission to find their Greek Australian 'tribal' brothers who set foot Down Under in 1898.
The quest to find their gypsy compatriots in Melbourne has been hailed a success as just a few weeks ago, they managed to come in contact with the self professed 'king' of the Greek Australian gypsies Fotis Stirio.
Mr Stirio is a fourth generation descendant of Christo Stirio, who reached Australian soil and more accurately South Australian soil, via boat, accompanied by 25 other siblings just before the turn of the 20th century.
Mr Babikis and Mr Demetriou told Neos Kosmos that their mission would have been impossible without the help and support of the Greek Orthodox Community of Melbourne and Victoria's president Bill Papastergiadis and Bishop Ezekiel, who opened their arms and hearts.
While their initial aim was to establish a relationship with the Greek Australian gypsies, the realities of the lives of those naturalised Greek Australian gypsies created a whole different task for Mr Babikis and Mr Demetriou.
"What we had seen up until now is that many of our brothers and sisters here, live on the realm of extreme poverty" says Mr Babikis and adds that from his personal experience in Greece, there is a lot of room for improvement.
"I am illiterate. A lot of other men and women in my age are illiterate but this 'weakness' of ours never stopped us from trying to educate our younger generation and help them in order to have a better chance in life," he says and adds that education is the key of success for his Greek Australian compatriots.
The grim reality that they had seen, led them to organise two open meetings at the hall of St Paraskevi in St Albans offering those in need food supplies. During those meetings they met with more than 200 people and they had the chance to discuss their issues and the prospect of helping the Greek Australian gypsies to create a governing body in order to help them promote their issues and establish a unified voice in the wider community, governments; as well as welfare institutions.
"I will not leave Australia in a haste," said Mr Babikis, "I was promised on behalf of the President Mr Papastergiadis and I thank him wholeheartedly for that, that he will help our brothers to set the founding stone of their governing body. I will stay in Australia for another month until I achieve this. On behalf of Mr Stirio there is a great deal of will and I think we can achieve it," he concluded.
According to latest statistics there are some 3,000 Greek Australian gypsies living currently in Australia, most of them in Melbourne and Sydney.