Chrysoula Heisler (née Vatsilas) welcomes me with a warm smile in front of her colourful garden at her Glenside home. She has loved Aussie gardens since the day she set foot in the country. I tell her she looks great, and she says that she is getting old.

Almost 90 years old she embraces age with grace and a relaxed sense of humour. We sit at the dining table surrounded by awards and photos from the pst. I ask Chrysoula Heisler if she prefers to chat in English or Greek. “I love the Greek language, and I made sure my two daughters learned it,” she says. “I am proud to be Greek.”

Migrant women like Heisler are the glue of ethnic communities. They hold everything together. They look after their families, transmit customs and traditions from generation to generation, and contribute to their communities.

Heisler has been President of the Greek Women’s Society of South Australia ‘O Taxiarchis’ for the last four years and her involvement with the organisation spans nearly six decades. “I love the Women’s Society and its members,” she says. “It gives me purpose. When my husband passed away 11 years ago, I realised how important the Society is to women who live alone.”

From Athens to Adelaide

Born in May 1935 in Athens to parents from Sinope, the northernmost city of Asia Minor, Heisler says that despite the challenges, her parents, who were all tailors and seamstresses by trade, taught her and her siblings well. “We were lucky our parents were modern,” she says about Dimitrios and Kyriaki and reminisces how the family ended up in Adelaide.

“My brother, Kyriakos Vatsilas, was a car mechanic. Someone from the Australian Embassy in Athens, visited his workshop and talked to him about life in Australia,” she says.

“This is how we decided to come. And because we had some family ties with the Bouyessis family in Adelaide. Greece and its people were suffering post-WWII. There was no progress or opportunities.”

Heisler was meant to come to Australia on one of the migrant ships with her second brother, Savvas, but a last-minute phone call from the Embassy got her on a flight to Australia through Singapore.

She left Athens in December 1956, travelled through Singapore, and landed on Australian soil in January 1958. “Singapore was beautiful, and I saw things that I’ve never seen before,” she says. Her next stop was Darwin, then Sydney and Melbourne, and a few days later, she arrived in Adelaide by train.

She was only 20 years old at the time. “I had some English lessons in Athens but when I arrived, I realised that the Australian language is different,” she says. “I didn’t have formal studies.”

During the post-war years, her father had taught her the letters of the Greek alphabet, carving them with a stick on the sand. The English language she learnt through a few lessons she did before coming to Australia and books she bought from Myer. She loved Adelaide with its red cottages, greenery, and flowers. Her brother Savvas arrived six months later, and within two years, her parents migrated, too.

Heisler started working and adjusting to her new life in Australia.

“My first job was at the production line at McEwin Jams and then a biscuit factory at Port Road,” she says.

A happy married life that started at Olympic Hall

Like many Greek migrants in Adelaide, Chrysoula Heisler enjoyed weekly outings at the Greek Community’s events.

“I started going to the Greek Community events with my brother Savvas who was still single, in the late 1950s. Once Olympic Hall was built, we knew where to go every Saturday. There was something on every weekend of the year,” she says, explaining that Olympic Hall was a meeting point at the time.”

At Olympic Hall I met Naso, my husband, through a friendly couple. I was 23 and he was thirty,” Ms Heisler reminisces. “Nasos was a polite young man. He asked my brother’s permission to dance with me, and the rest is history.”

Born in Alexandria, Egypt, to a Hungarian father and a Greek Cypriot mother, Nasos Heisler was a toolmaker by trade and fluent in six languages, including Italian. In Adelaide, he was driving the taxi he owned.

“We got married within six months. We both had our parents here. Taxiarchis was our Church, Olympic Hall our home and this is how our family grew,” Heisler says.

The family’s first home was in Frewville, where they had two kids. There, they lived with Chrysoula’s parents and younger brother, and once the kids grew older, the family moved to a new house in Magill.

“Australians could not comprehend how three generations live together but my kids had a great upbringing. They would listen to my mum’s fairy tales and were surrounded by the warmth of our family,” Heisler says.

“As a couple, we could go out and not worry about baby-sitting. But you give something to get something. We were close together as a family and looked after our parents,” she says.

“At the new house in Magill, we only had the necessary furniture, but we had a lovely view, and we entertained a lot. Our home was always open.”

A life of dedication and volunteering to the Community

In 1965, Theodosia Psalti, then secretary at the Greek Women’s Society, retired.

“I replaced Theodosia in 1966/7, and I remained the secretary for five decades until I became President four years ago,” says Ms Heisler.

“The Women’s Society worked hard to support the Greek Orthodox Community, but we lived a good life. We were donating our time but it was rewarding,” she says.

“The Community did not have many women then, and we covered that gap. We would organise get-togethers for tea and sell raffle tickets, we would organise the Grecian Ball, and Nasos was volunteering as a bingo caller for many decades.”

“We were doing so much for the Community. This way, we felt closer to the homeland. But now we are old, and things have changed. Younger generations don’t have the same passion for the Community.”

I asked her for some advice.

“Don’t pay much attention to setbacks. Look ahead, at the future,” she says. “Australia embraced us but we should be proud to be Greek.”

*Don’t miss out on Neos Kosmos‘ special South Australia Supplement published on 27 July for more stories on SA’s Greek history. The story was first published in Vol. 37, June 2024 Edition of the Community Pulse, GOCSA’s quarterly newsletter.