It is not often you get the opportunity to examine a whole life, and explore how many bizarre coincidences, instinctive decisions, and chance meetings make up our destiny, along with the global developments that mark the era we were born into.

We got this unique opportunity, to travel back in time to the early 20th century in Melbourne, following the life of Dennis Varigos, a remarkable Ithacan who lived between 1918 and 2012. On account of his participation in the junior cricket team that won the Victorian championship in 1932, he is making his way into the The Australian Sports Museum at the MCG.

It was highly unusual at that time for an athlete of Greek background to play competitive cricket, and footy, sports in which Dennis Varigos excelled in.

Sport, for Mr Varigos, was a way of gaining respect in an environment still hostile towards the new immigrants arriving in Australia, although the city of Melbourne in which he grew up in, had already around 200 Greeks, including several Ithacans, who had established themselves with great success in Australian society.

Many of them came from his ancestral village, where immigration to Australia had begun in the mid-19th century.

“When someone from your village leaves and makes a lot of money, it’s sure to be talked about among the other two thousand villagers, and it won’t take long for others to follow the journey,” Dennis’ son, Nick Varigos, told Neos Kosmos, as he recounts his father’s life, and the journey of his Ithacan ancestors from the village of Exogi.

“As the name Exogi suggests, the village is out of this world!” Mr Varigos said, with a laugh, describing the beautiful settlement perched on mount Neios, almost 400 metres above the sea, on the north coast of Ithaca

How Dennis came to be born in Melbourne is also an interesting story, which depicts the courage and ingenuity of his parents, who until a few years before lived and thrived in Rhodesia, Africa.

His grandparents, Ioannis and Yannoula Varvarigos, came to Australia as a result of a hasty decision made on the spur of the moment, in 1914, said Mr Varigos.

They were on a ship sailing back to Africa, where they lived at the time, when World War I broke out, leaving them stranded at the Suez Canal, which had closed due to the war.

The boat docked next to theirs was heading for Australia, and without a second thought they decided to embark and “go as far away from trouble as they could”, leaving behind Greece, their life in Africa, for a country completely unknown to them.

His grandmother at the time was pregnant with her third child, while the couple’s two older children were growing up with their grandparents in Ithaca, and would later join their family once they were settled in Melbourne.

From the Roaring Twenties and onwards

Dennis Varigos was born in 1918 in Melbourne, the year the war ended, and as the Roaring Twenties were about to begin, so his early years were carefree and optimistic.

He spent his childhood in the city centre, living at 38 Bourke Street, where the family now owned a four-story building that housed a successful café, The Palace Tearooms, later renamed Rigos Palace Tea Rooms. His playgrounds were the parks of East Melbourne, the MCG, Fitzroy and the city centre, where many Greeks also lived.

Growing up in the heart of the city were happy days, Dennis Varigos recalled in his memoirs.

“We had two rooms on the top floor which my mother would let out to people who had just arrived from Ithaca, and we were always surrounded by people,” he wrote, adding that every Sunday, there would be at least 14 people around the table for lunch, in a home where they were only allowed to converse in Greek.

When Dennis Varigos started at North Fitzroy Central School, he was the only Greek boy and so he learnt first-hand, with fist and fight, how to deal with racism. Many times, he would come home from school with a black eye. And when his father would ask what happened he would answer that “this is what happens when you say your name is Menelaos Varvarigos.

Eventually, however, he was accepted by his classmates, who would stand by him when they started high school, where he would excel in sports, in footy and cricket, gaining respect and admiration amongst his peers and beyond. It was during this time that he joined the unbeatable cricket team that would win the Victorian Championship.

In the same year that Dennis Varigos’ future looked so promising, he was forced to give it all up, along with his schooling, as the Great Depression hits, affecting along with everyone else, his family, who need him to work so they can make ends meet.

“In the first years of his life he lived it all,” his son Nick Varigos, explained.

“He lived through the golden post-war era of the 1920s, the global depression of the 1930s and World War II.” All this before his thirtieth birthday.

When World War II broke out, 22-year-old Dennis, the youngest son in the family, not yet established in business, was forced to enlist in the army.

Once again, the young Ithacan thought ahead and applied to transfer to the Royal Australian Air Force, to work in the technical field.

“That saved his life,” his son believes. “Since he was a good technician and the Air Force was growing rapidly, he was kept in Australia to train others who were joining, so he never had to go into battle overseas.” There were many he knew who didn’t make it back from the war, he added.

“When the war ended, my father decided he wanted to become a pharmacist like his brothers, but it was difficult because he had not finished school.”

Determined as he was, he took advantage of the government post-war repatriation programme and completed his schooling and exams within a year, gaining entry into the Pharmacy College, from where he would go on to study at Melbourne University.

He met the love of his life Rita Paizes, whilst studying Pharmacy. They married and later found out that their families had crossed paths before they were even born. Her parents met in that corner on Bourke St. Her father was renting a room from Dennis’ family, at the same time her mother ran a business right opposite, at 39 Bourke Street.

“It gives you an example of the tight-knit communities. And funnily, it is through the grandparents on one side that I got grandparents on the other!” Nick Varigos said.

Dennis’ passion for sport would lead him into many athletic clubs in Melbourne.

“Dad was a very social human being, with a strong sense of community.” Nick Varigos said.

He was known in the Greek community for his involvement in the different community organisations, but also beyond, through his participation in many sports clubs.

“He was one of the first Greeks to become a member of the Victoria Racing Club and the Melbourne Cricket Clubs,” his son says, explaining that through his involvement in those clubs, he came to know many politicians, most of the specialist doctors in Melbourne, and other dignitaries. Connections that helped him establish his impressive pharmacy, at the top end of Collins Street, as the official pharmacy of the Victorian Government.

Nick Varigos recalls how his father lived life to the full.

“Every day, right to the end, I remember him asking, as soon as he woke up: ‘Well! What are we going to do today?’ Every day of his life! That says a lot about his character,” he said.

“Little Ithaca” in Camberwell

Nick Varigos and his two brothers, John and Greg grew up with their cousins, grandparents and uncles, in a “little Ithaca” his grandfather had created after he bought a huge house in Camberwell in the early 1940s.

“One part of the house was bought by my father. The other part, my grandfather gave as dowry to his daughter. So we grew up next to my grandparents, my uncle who lived with them, and my aunt and her family.

“We were seven cousins living next to each other on the same street. My father soon brought his in-laws to live with us, so we had a whole village of grandparents, uncles and aunties.” Mr Varigos said all their crockery had their initials written with nail polish, so they wouldn’t get lost every time they partied and celebrated together.

“My father was my best friend. There were no secrets between us,” he said, remembering the invaluable years he had with him.

Though Dennis Varigos had successfully established himself in Australian society, his ancestral home in Ithaca, was always in his heart.

“My father didn’t go to the island until he was 50 years old. But he knew everything there. We went up to the village and found our ‘patriko’ and then my father started telling me the names of those who lived in the neighbouring houses. ‘But how do you know?’ I would ask. He had memorised the village from the stories his father told him, without ever being there.

He loved Ithaca. He went quite a few times, and when I finally bought a house there, he was so proud. Especially because his father had sold everything when he settled in Australia.”

Until the very end, Dennis lived life to the fullest. His son, Nick would accompany him everywhere growing up, and came to understand that age is just a number and nothing more.

“My father loved life fully,” Mr Varigos adds. So much so that he wanted to sum it all up in one phrase, inscribing over his final resting place, that “Life’s been wonderful” giving hope and inspiration to his descendants.

His brother James, in front of the family cafe on Bourke St. Photo: Supplied

Article published in The Age, describes the players in the junior cricket team of 1932

Two grandfathers at the beach, left and right.

Day at the beach

Dennis Varigos at Melbourne's first Greek School. Photo: Supplied