On 26 September, 1963, Federal MP Maria Vamvakinou arrived at Station Pier, Melbourne. The year was 1963 – 50 years ago. On Thursday, Ms Vamvakinou reflected on this important milestone in her life, one that she says may not have happened had her granfather stayed in the United States, when he migrated there as a single twentysomething.
“Knowing that members of your family – almost 100 years ago – were doing similar things, migrating, makes the whole experience even more wonderful,” Ms Vamvakinou tells Neos Kosmos.
But it was her journey to Australia on the SS Patris bound for Australia 50 years that sparks an emotion inside, that compells the MP to sit back and reflect on her life as a migrant child, a story she says she shares with more than 7 million Australians.
“It’s an emotional day,” says Ms Vamvakinou when we called her on Thursday, the 50 year anniversary of her arrival to Australia.
“Fifty years is a long time and you have to sit back and wonder where it all went. For my two children this is just a story, and it’s an important part of their own heritage.”
She also wonders about her father and what goes through his mind. At 83, her dad Panagiotis is still living in the same house in Carlton the family moved into in 1964.
On the day, Ms Vamvakinou took time to remember people past, relatives loved, and a neighbourhood that encompassed so much of her identity, and still does today.
She remembers her mum, Stella, who died thirty years ago from breast cancer. Her sister, Helen, in Greece. And then she remembers her home in Carlton, and what it was like then and what it is today.
“I get very emotional becuase I think of the peopel I grew up with and the people I went to school with and some of them have passed away.”
She says the neighborhood is still reminisint of the past with an uncle and cousins still in the area. But also a rejuvenitation thanks to a new era of people bringing a vibrancy to Carlton as the migrants did in the ’60s.
