The Cyprus Community of Melbourne and Victoria has exhibited vision by commissioning the book The Children of Aphrodite: Cypriots in Australia. The book by Professor Anastasios Tamis is an important historical document on Cypriots in Australia over more than 100 years. It is extensive and documents many accounts of struggles and successes that would otherwise be lost to us.
The book project was initiated by the former President of the CCMV, Stelios Angelodimou and myself in discussion with Prof Tamis and supported by the board of CCMV. The subsequent writing of the book, and financial support for it has been a major ongoing project of the CCMV since I became acting President and then President of that organisation. I thank my CCMV Board members for their support for this important project and also Prof Tamis and his team , including Maria Sakkellaridis for typesetting it and Peter Zapris and Ellikon for printing it expeditiously.
The book covers all of Australia and was commissioned by the CCMV to celebrate its 90th year of operation. To my knowledge this kind of intensive documentation of history has not been done before in the Cypriot Diaspora.
While the book contains many stories from around Australia, it also documents how during its 90 years the CCMV or its predecessor organisations have been a focal point for maintaining Greek and Cypriot culture and language. There have been many challenges but also many successes. Our parents worked hard, and they and their children contributed to the arts, in law, in politics, in healthcare and many other areas. Together they helped build Australia while retaining their traditions and culture. More than that, they helped change Australia into a multicultural tolerant society.
I read through the book entirely over a month and made revision suggestions most of which I am pleased to say were accepted by Mr Tamis. Here is a small sample of what readers can expect to find:
Spyros Kyriacou migrated to Australia on 2 December 1926 to reunite with his brother, who had settled four years earlier. He states:
When I arrived, I met my brother in the Murray. He was cutting timber with an axe. He was labouring all day for one tone of timber and was earning eight shillings. I settled first in Melbourne with my cousin and a Catholic priest advised us that an Australian was building water dams in the bush. When we arrived there, we were told that there was no job for us, but we were employed by a local farmer to pick string beans. We were earning three shillings for a large sack. Then we were employed 24 miles inside the forest in the construction of a rural road. That job was inhumane. We camped with several Italian migrants in the open. We did not have provisions. The water holes were infested with mosquitoes, there were millions. The boss was a very harsh man; we were not allowed to put the pick down. Later, I moved to Orbost, seeking employment. I cleared large farms with the axe for the next three years working with other Greeks and Italians. Then I began picking corn for seven pennies per bag. I shared a hut with my mates. The cold was unbearable. When a new Australian Prime Minister was elected, he ordered that priority for employment be given to Australians. It was a most difficult period. We approached a kind-hearted farmer, Terry Clifford, who had more than 100 cows. We assisted him to milk them and in return he used to give us one gallon of milk. We boiled rice and with the milk we sustained ourselves for months. Then we moved to Lake Corringle and then back to Orbost, before migrating to Mildura for fruit picking. My brother introduced me to an immigrant young lady. We got married and I fathered five children. The Victorian–born Premier of South Australia, John Gunn was against so many foreigners, and the unions systematically opposed the fact that “foreigners who could not speak a word of English were being taken on, while Australian workmen of good standing were forced to walk the streets”. They “resented the insult to Australia’s dead soldiers sons by the Commonwealth Government filling their places with Yugoslavs, Italians, Greeks, and other Mediterranean races now migrating to Australia”.
I highlight this account to show the intensity of our ancestors struggles in Australia. But also, to show that the injustices in Australia were not just perpetrated against our indigenous populations. They are rightly being recognised today, but a word should also be spared for the injustices against European settlers in the early years which were no less severe.
The book mentions Michael Georgiou who was born in Morphou to farmer parents. His children, reputed scientists George, and Dr Harry Georgiou, many years later narrate their parental story.
The Cyprian Community was dad’s “first home” when he arrived in Melbourne. He would visit the Cyprian Community without fail every Saturday for his entire life. We remember the first building (up to the early 1960s) in Russell St. In the late 1960s, the community shifted upstairs to Russell St. Later (the early 1970s) to the newly renovated premises in Heffernan Lane, then to Lygon St Brunswick, its current premises. As children, Harry and I remember going to the club with dad.”
I too remember going to the club in Heffernan Lane with my father. We all in some ways relied on community support in those difficult times.
Not only were Cypriots a part of the Australian Bush culture and in Queensland part of the sugar Cain industry, but they also became involved in unions and politically organised around many issues.
The secretary of the Greek Seamen’s Union, Antonios Ambatielos was arrested during the Greek Civil War and was imprisoned in 1947, until 1964. Ambatielos was eventually released in response to immense international political pressure, including that exerted by the Australian Waterside Workers who protested the Conservative Government in Greece and people like Cypriot Thomas Costa and his comrades, who refused to unload the Greek vessels anchored at Sydney Harbour. Ultimately. it was agreed that the ships would be allowed to dock, providing the Greek government consider the early release of political prisoners from Greek prisons.
The illegal invasion by Turkey of Cyprus has yielded many stories that are documented in the book. Georgios Efthymiou gives one account: “It was very early in the morning on Saturday, 20 July, when we woke up from the roaring noise of the fighter jets and their bombs. There was much panic and disarray. Our house was next to the hospital where the first wounded victims arrived. In search of some protection, the people from Lapithos rushed to the chapel of St George of Spiliotis. The sky and the sea were filled with helicopters and invading boats.”
The book documents the contribution of Tony Toumbourou, one of the most decisive community leaders. Tony spoke against the regime of “alienation and estrangement of both communities that the Turkish government was attempting to impose as a result of the long occupation and separation in order to turn the occupied region of Cyprus into a region of Turkey”. Words that resound today.
Then there was my own family. The book documents how my father, Charalambos Theophanous was born in Neo Chorio, a village in the Paphos district of Cyprus, about eight km west of Polis where I was born. He worked as a cobbler in Polis. Charalambos was captivated by my mother Marika’s Athenian accent, when they met and fell in love. She had escaped famine and death during the cruel years of the German Occupation of Greece after having experienced the death of her father from starvation. She and a group of thirty compatriots, escaped by boat from Chios to Çeşme, a Turkish town opposite Chios before their settlement as refugees in British-occupied Cyprus. She met Charalambos because she used to take her shoes to his shop in Polis, and he would put messages inside her shoe for her to read — no internet back then. Charalambos embarked on the liner Patris and following a tedious journey for three months, he arrived in Melbourne. He was alone for 3 years trying to raise the money to buy fares to bring his wife and children. He was employed as an unskilled industrial labourer in the Standard Motor Company in Port Melbourne.
Unable to raise the funds he turned to the World Council of Churches, which provided no interest loans for family reunification. It took Charalambos almost 35 years to repay the loan. Upon their arrival, the family rented in Moreland, then Airport West, then Albert Park, until the State Government of Henry Bolte offered the Theophanous family a Housing Commission house in Broadmeadows with a nominal deposit. How the Liberal Party has changed.
It was in this house that all the children grew up, attending the local primary and high schools. These were the roots from which a Federal and a state Member of Parliament emerged. In my case I am proud to have served as a Minister in three Labor Governments. The book documents how Charalambos Theophanous like so many other Cypriots of his generation, was a dedicated family man, safeguarding the traditional core values of the Greek Cypriot family and promoting the educational welfare of their children. I urge everyone to purchase a copy and read about our Cypriot parents, grandparents, ancestors and ourselves.
*Theo Theophanous is President of the Cyprus Community of Melbourne and Victoria and a Former Victorian Government Minister.