The Greek Orthodox Community of Melbourne and Victoria (GOCMV) was established on 22 August 1897, in Melbourne, when a number of Greeks gathered to discuss the issue and bring over a priest from the Patriarchate of Jerusalem for the religious needs of themselves and those Arab speaking Orthodox people of the Victorian capital.

The idea of the establishment of a Greek Community had pre-existed since 1895, when a letter with some money was sent to the then Patriarch of Jerusalem Gerassimos, for sending a priest. The Greek-born population of Victoria at that time was approximately 200 and that of Melbourne, probably less than 150.

In 1897, Dorotheos Bakaliaros, an Archimandrite, visited Melbourne and Sydney and assisted the Greek migrants for a while with their Church needs.

The members of the Greek Community met again in March 1898, elected a Community Council (CC) and wrote a new letter to the Patriarchate. This time their effort was successful, the Patriarch accepted their appeal and sent Father Athanasios Kantopoulos, who arrived in Melbourne on 22 June 1898, whom the members of the Greek community welcomed with “indescribable joy”, as the Community Minutes inform us.

In September 1898 a General Meeting (GM) decided unanimously to collect money to buy an appropriate block of land for erecting a Community church which they should “put under the protection of the free corner of the Greek nation”. By July 1899 the money collected was £125. The Committee negotiated the present site of Evangelismos at £600 for which the collection was paid, plus a loan provided by the three executive members of the committee, Grigorios Matorikos, Alexandros Maniakis and Antonios J. J. Lekatsas. The foundation stone of the church was laid on 19 December 1900 (6 December with the Old Julian Calendar) in the presence of local authorities, and the church was completed by 1902.

In 1902 a conflict had arisen between the Community Council and the priest Father Kantopoulos, who wanted to register the church as property of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, making an alliance with the Orthodox Arabic speaking Syrians. The CC opposed this decisively. It called a Special General Meeting (SGM) in August 1902, passed unanimously a Constitution, named the Church of Greece as the Community’s spiritual head and elected a board of three trustees, Alexander Maniakis, Antonios J. J. Lekatsas and Grigorios Matorikos, and declared the church as property of the Greek Community of Melbourne.

In 1906 the Community, after a series of Bulgarian attacks which caused many Greek victims in Macedonia (under Ottoman rule at the time), organised an appeal, collected the amount of £187 and sent it to the Greek minister for finance, with a letter stating “for reorganisation and building a well-trained army and navy (…) to enable us in the near future to be able to fight effectively against our multiple enemies” (Community minutes).

In 1912, after the declaration of the First Balkan War, the Greek Community called a public meeting, collected money and sent to the Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos £2,472 for the assistance of the Greek national struggle.

In 1916 the organisation started celebrating the Greek National Day of 25th of March and in 1922 decided to take steps to establish a Greek afternoon school, which started operating in November 1923 in the rooms of the Ithacan Association ‘Ulysses’. However, the Greek school folded the following year. It was not until 1929 that the GOCMV established its own Saturday school under the guidance of an independent school committee.
In March 1932 the Community faced economic problems for the second time since 1921 but it managed to overcome them in the end.

At the Annual General Meeting in August 1934, Nikiforos Lekatsas proposed that women be given the right of full membership, however, the new CC, with Angelos Lekatsas as its president, postponed taking any decision for implementation of the proposal.

The Annual Community Dance Grecian Ball, a very important event in the social calendar of the Greek Community in Melbourne, was set up in 1936.
In September 1938 a Special General Meeting voted for the change of the title of the Community to ‘Greek Orthodox Community of Melbourne and Victoria’.

In February 1940 the two Community schools were amalgamated.

Full membership rights were granted to women in the AGM of August 1952.

In February 1952, at the onset of the Cold War, and a few years after the Greek Civil War, the Community Council decided to dissolve its Athletic team ‘Olympiakos’ because it had shown signs of ‘pro-Left tendencies’.

In September 1960, as a result of conflict with the Greek Archdiocese of Australia, the then president of the Greek Orthodox Community of Melbourne and Victoria, Dimitrios Elefantis, and 10 councillors of the Greek Community of Adelaide were excommunicated. The abrogation of the excommunications by the Archdiocese came in May 1961.

In September 1961 the old Greek Community Centre in Lonsdale Street was launched.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s there were attempts for negotiations in order to solve the ongoing Church dispute in Australia, centred on the issue of who was going to have the upper hand in the representation and the leadership of the Greek Community in the Antipodes.

In the 1970s the Greek Orthodox Community of Melbourne and Victoria participated together with other Greek community organisations in the Greek (Cultural) Festival, which was run under the auspices of the Greek Consulate in Melbourne. The Greek Festival was the pre cursor of the Antipodes Festival, which was started by the Community in 1987.

In September 1979 the educationalist Costas Yiamiadakis proposed the establishment of a Community day-school but failed to get the support of the majority at the Annual General Meeting. The issue of the establishment of a day school preoccupied the members of the Community for a number of years.

In November 1987 the Annual General Meeting approved the purchase of the land and buildings of the Parade College at Alphington for establishing a Community day-school, namely the Alphington Grammar School.

In the early 1990s the Community faced huge financial problems due to its large debt, as a result of the loan for the purchase and operation of the school and the steep increases of the interest rates. However, the board of the then president of the Community, George Fountas, managed to get a loan by the National Bank of Greece (4.75 million dollars), guaranteed by the Greek government. The loan, which was never paid back, managed to save the Community from bankruptcy.

The Greek government came to the help of the Greek community again in the early 2000s, with another donation of 2.6 million dollars, in order to support Alphington Grammar School.

Bill Papastergiadis, the current president, and his board took over in the Greek Orthodox Community of Melbourne and Victoria, the oldest Greek organisation in Australia, in January 2008. Under their leadership, amongst others, the Community is able to officially launch tomorrow its new 15-storey building at the historical centre of Hellenism in Melbourne, at the corner of Lonsdale and Russel Street.

* Most of the information for this article was drawn from Christos N. Fifis ‘Brief Outline of the History of the GOCMV’ as it appears on the website of the Community.