When a young Cretan soldier fled the war in Smyrna in 1922, stopping in Crete to say goodbye to his mother before escaping – his journey of survival marked the beginning of a new chapter for his family, and generations to come.
The 20-year-old Cretan from Gavalochori -a tiny village near Chania- was George Nikakis. He migrated first to Egypt, where he met his wife Maria Stefanidou, and from there to Australia, just over a hundred years ago.
The first to join him from his village, before World War II broke out, was his nephew Michael Nikakis (his brother’s Konstaninos’s son), who needed to leave the country urgently after being imprisoned for being a communist. In the 1950s, more family members followed, including George’s widowed sister, Filia Tsakirakis, her children, and additional nephews and relatives.
A family reunion to mark a century in Australia
To commemorate the centenary of migration and honour their ancestors, 125 members of the Nikakis family— five generations—gathered at the Cretan Brotherhood of Melbourne on Sunday March 2. Nikakis was a Cretan Brotherhood founder and served as its president for many years.
“It is an obligation I truly believe, every generation has, to never let their children forget their roots,” Fiona (Theano) Strintzos, granddaughter of Konstantinos Nikakis said.
“Understanding our grandparents, their struggles and triumphs, the obstacles they faced and the values they held, can help us better understand our parents and in that deep connection and retracing, comes an awareness and understanding of who we are.”
George Nikakis thrived in Australia
At a time when a handshake was a binding contract, George Nikakis was able to run multiple businesses with little formal education. He became rich and garnered respect among fellow Greeks and Australians alike.
Michael Nikakis -the fifth child of George Nikakis and Maria Stefanidou, an Egyptian born Greek- spoke to Neos Kosmos about his upbringing in Melbourne, and his father’s lasting influence.
“The family life and the parenting was so good, it was completely taken for granted.
In retrospect I have come to realise what a truly amazing man he was, not only on what he achieved financially, but because of what he provided in the home. His integrity and values shaped the way he and my mother raised us,” Nikakis said.
The war in Asia Minor was the catalyst
George Nikakis never raised his experience of the war in Asia Minor, the catalyst behind his decision to escape Greece except for once.
He was 17-18 when he was conscripted into the army to fight in the Greco-Turkish war.
“He never spoke of the atrocities he witnessed except on that one occasion, about how he found himself injured in a hospital in Smyrna, in 1922 when the Turks started surrounding the township.
“This was just before the burning of Smyrna and the massacre of the Greek population.
He told me ‘I had seen what we had done to the Turks, and if they were going to do the same to us, I had to get out of there’. He escaped to Crete, to see his mother, and then fled to Alexandria to avoid imprisonment for desertion.”
His instinct of survival is what drove him throughout his life.
“From those early experiences he carried with him all those fears, and the anxieties of just how to survive. It was what drove him and what made him provide so much security for his family, to ensure that we never faced any of that.”
Nikakis Sr. arrived in Melbourne in September 1924, on board the Italian steamer Caprera, years before the wave of post-war mass migration, when the country was still largely Anglo-Celtic.
His descendants remember him as immaculately dressed in a three-piece suit, and a cigar in hand. His Jaguar is another favourite memory among his nieces and nephews, that scent of leather and cigars, as they secretly explored it, whenever he would visit.
“What is imprinted in my memory, are his eyes, piercing and searching, and yet, at the absolute base of them, there was a kindness,” Michael said, remembering how often strangers would recount how his father had helped them when they were at their lowest.
“One story that seems to get repeated often is how he fed the hungry during the Great Depression.”
He offered his help discreetly, with respect, giving out cards with his signature to the unemployment bureau during that time. He urged them to offer these cards for a free meal at his café, to those they saw hungry and struggling.
An entrepreneurial and generous spirit
On the voyage to Australia, George Nikakis befriended a fellow Greek, George Sarikizis. Born in Alikarnassos in Asia Minor, Sarikizis and his family fled during the Asia Minor Catastrophe to Kos.
On that ship, the two made plans to open a business together once they raised the capital. Within a year of working -Nikakis as a cook and kitchen hand at the Acropolis Club in Lonsdale Street and Sarikizis as a barber- they were able to open ‘Omonia’, at 246 Russell Street.
Business was good. Their café became popular with many Greek male customers of the time, until an unfortunate incident in late 1929 would change everything.
During the Great Depression, Greek customers began asking for alcohol. Having no liquor license, they secretly served drinks in coffee cups until someone reported them and they were charged.
Being a bachelor with less to lose than Nikakis who had a family, Sarikizis, took full responsibility and was deported to Greece. Years later, struggling to provide for his family in Kos, he sought to return.
Nikakis, eager to repay his friend’s sacrifice, invited him back, informing him that his criminal record had been erased. Nikakis even put down a deposit for a two-story building in South Melbourne and gave it to his friend to help him restart his life and the two remained lifelong friends.
The first 24-hour cafe in Melbourne and the Centenary Hotel
Nikakis went on to establish the first 24-hour café in Melbourne -and possibly Australia- the George ‘N’ Café. It burned down in 1939, but he reopened it on Russel Street before eventually selling it to buy the Centenary Hotel, in 1950. This would be the first stop for thousands of Greek migrants arriving in Australia.
In 1949, Nikakis travelled back to Crete to see his parents and siblings for the first time since migrating. Michael, his son, recalls his father returning a changed man.
During the trip his father got pneumonia, and as he lay delirious in an Athens hospital, he begged to go home- and in that moment he understood home to him was Australia.
“He was very different from then on in some of his teachings to us. He started fully embracing Australia, and that conflict between the two different cultures we were raised with, was no more.”
Filia Tsakirakis
Nikakis’s visit to his ancestral village in 1949, is engraved in Katina Rerakis’s memory, granddaughter of Filia Tsakirakis, then a nine-year-old.
Nikakis walked into his sister’s garden, Katina was next door in the school yard, gaping at the well-dressed man in a suit and a hat.
“I had never seen anyone dressed in a suit, let alone wearing a hat. For all I knew, he had landed from the moon!” she laughs remembering the trunk of beautiful clothes and food he brought for everyone.
The visit marked the beginning of the Tsakirakis’s family gradual migration to Australia. Katina cried as her aunties left one by one, and was completely heartbroken when her beloved grandmother, Filia, also migrated three years later.
“It was probably the worst day in my life, because I loved my grandmother so much. There was not a person in the world who did not love her; she was so sweet, so clever…
“Even though she was illiterate and signed her name with a cross, you would think she had studied psychology in the way she knew things and guided us always. She promised me that I would join them when I was older.”
Katina eventually migrated to Australia when she turned 18.
Konstantinos Nikakis
Adventure was in the blood of the Nikakis family, the eldest son Konstantinos and his brother Emmanuil embarked for America in 1916, to work in the gold mines in California – like other young Cretan men at the turn of the 20th century.
Tragically, Emmanouil died there at 24, and Konstantinos returned to Crete.
With the money he had saved, Konstantinos was able to establish a Tannery and purchase land in Agia Kyriaki to build a larger home for his family, his grandson Con Nikakis said at the reunion.
“My grandfather was affectionately known as ‘O Nikas’. Those who knew him described him as a tall, strong, imposing man, generous, and one who commanded respect. The word levendi was often used to describe him, which filled me with immense pride,” he added.
Katina Rerakis said that when she first read Zorba the Greek, she felt that the author, Nikos Kazantzakis, based the character of Captain Michael Zorbas on the Nikakis men. “They were men of few but straight words, strong men, who did not put up with insults or cheats, and who knew how to enjoy life.”
Konstantinos never migrated to Australia, but his son, Michael who was imprisoned for his communist beliefs in Chania, managed to escape and was urgently dispatched to Australia to his uncle George, where he also thrived. Later his other sons followed. From his children, only two stayed on in Chania.
Honouring the family legacy
“With this event, we’re writing a beautiful story. Not only of their lives, but also of the connectedness between all of us that have come from these three,” Fiona Strintzos told Neos Kosmos.
She said that they are all “still so close”.
“Sharing these life-stories with the fifth generation, gives us the opportunity to instil in them the values of family, integrity, resilience, and generosity our ancestors lived by. “