She wanted to be an artist.
Her father wanted her to study something she could make a living off, “as all Greek parents did back then.”
She settled for architecture.
“My father used to do a lot of things, one was he renovated a few properties […] so we had a few plans lying around the house, and I liked looking at them. And when I was thinking about what to do, I thought about this as something creative,” Cathy Greenaway (nee Drosinos) tells Neos Kosmos.
“[Pursuing architecture] gave me a link to my father, but really I was chasing my own dream,” she adds.
And the decision proved the right one beyond professional life.
Cathy met husband Jefa through an international design competition for Federation Square back in 1996.
Their architectural collaboration united them in life, leading to a wedding and two children, in their teens today, Alexander and Mia.
It also brought them together in business.
Cathy established a firm in 1998 which “became the genesis for Greenaway Architects” their award-winning practice in projects ranging from residential to commercial and cultural. Like one of their latest ones in progress, materialising Australia’s first Indigenous residential college.
Jefa shares with Neos Kosmos how he sees their skills and temperaments combining at work.
“Cathy has tended to bring a strong artistic sensibility, while I bring the technical focus and have tended to be the public face of the practice despite being an introvert by nature.”
He recalls the first design of his wife he saw the day they met, being drawn to her “quite contemporary and quite bold architectural aesthetic.”
The Indigenous-focused projects they take on, he says, “draw upon my direct heritage, for the communities we are invited to work with.”
A proponent of what is known as Country-led design in Australian urban planning, Jefa is a descendant of the Wailwan/Kamilaroi and Dharawal Peoples in NSW.
His father was Bert Groves, a prominent activist of the Aboriginal rights movement leading to the 1967 referendum.
You might recognise the name by a street named after him in Canberra, or a building in Sydney.
It is worth reading this NY Times interview [https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/16/world/australia/jefa-greenaway-indigenous-architecture.html] recounting how Jefa heard his father’s voice for the first time in 2017, in a documentary.
His mother’s story is no less intriguing.
Born in Germany, Renate Sofia Schieron came out to Australia in 1958 with her parents after their ship sunk en route.
“It caught fire and sunk in the middle of the Indian Ocean[…] They were saved and they end up flying to Australia,” Jefa says.
His family from his mother’s side gave him insights into the migrant temperament. Much like it did for Cathy, whose father “always communicated the importance of entrepreneurship.”
“He got out of the factory as soon as he could,” Cathy says of Steven Drosinos.
Jefa jumps in: “He had a fire in the belly. In the same way that my uncle did from my mother’s side when he came to Melbourne and was running business.”
“Mum and my stepfather had their own business as well.”
Alongside the German part of his family, Jefa has also had a fair share of exposure to the Greek migrant culture thanks to Cathy.
And he could tell from the start that weddings are a big thing for Greeks.
“Funnily enough, I’d hardly ever been to a wedding before meeting Cathy. And then the first sort of 18 months of us being together, we were going to weddings almost every second week.”
When they decided to tie the knot in 2000, Cathy knew she wanted to get married in a Greek church.
“It was what I knew and I wanted to keep my parents happy as well. And Jefa didn’t object so I didn’t see an issue with it ,” she says.
“Also, we got married in St Katerini in East Malvern and it was a church that I’d grown up going to, so I had a link to it. It made sense that we would get married there. It just felt right.”
Jefa thinks “there’s something nice in continuing the traditions and customs of your culture.”
This is why, he says, he had “no issues whatsoever in getting baptised” Greek Orthodox as part of the process.
“I wasn’t baptised at all, so it didn’t faze me in the slightest. And I did an 8-week course at the Archdiocese in South Melbourne.”
To Indigenous Australians, Country, the specific place of their homeland is of pivotal importance.
Jefa thinks the same applies for Greeks, similarly associating place with family and kinship.
“I don’t know if they do it still in Greece, but here they’d always call someone theia or theio, you know auntie or uncle, as a sign of respect.
“Or ask ‘where is your village, your region.”
He also reflects on a “similar sense of humour” the two cultures share.
“They both laugh off the adversities,” Jefa says.
The couple have travelled to Greece a few times together. Mainly around Peloponnese, where Cathy’s parents are from.
Their first trip was after they got married and “B.C.”, as they recount laughing.
“This means before children.”
“We did a grand tour around Europe for about three months. But out of that period we probably spent three or four weeks in Greece.”
Asked about the powerful cultures they each bring on the table, in family life and work, Jefa speaks of benefits in the “collision of different thinking” and the “good aspect of Greek chaos”, mixing well with his Australian and German influences favouring order.
His temperament however is very Greek in some ways, Cathy seems to imply on a lighter ending note.
“Our ritual is every week we go to Niko’s at Oakleigh for a coffee. Jefa actually enjoys it more than me. And I’m sure the people there don’t know he’s Indigenous.”