Theodoros St. Kominos
(Treasurer of the Greek Community in Brisbane)
This biography is part of a collection from "Life in Australia" :
Among those who posses an enviable commercial position in Brisbane is to be included Mr. Theodoros St. Kominos, who hails from Dourianika on Kythera. After a short stay in Athens, at the age of only 18 years, Mr. Kominos departed for Australia in 1901. Having at the beginning various jobs, he succeeded with his brothers, Paul and Ioannis, together with others, in establish some splendid shops, particularly in Bundaberg in Queensland, which, thanks to his knowledgeable management, he raised to an extremely conspicuous position. After some time, he settled in Brisbane as a wholesale trader in fruit, managing, thanks to his commercial abilities alone, to complete successfully with his other, English colleagues. Today he is regarded as being among the best of the merchants in this trade there, thus doing great honour to the Greek name abroad. Because Mr. Kominos is to be numbered among the few Greeks who have devoted themselves to purely commercial activities and in view of his eager activity on behalf of national and social matters, Mr. Kominos deserves the admiration of us all.
Such in short is Mr. T. Kominos, who contributed to greatly to the foundation about a year ago of the Association of “New Greeks”, of which he was unanimously elected Treasurer. Thanks to his enviable spirit of co-operation and sympathy with all his brothers, he is now heading towards acquiring a considerable amount of property, clear proof of unity and ability. Their commercial name, known to all, in Queensland, is “Comino Bros”.
This biography is part of a collection from "Life in Australia" published in 1916 by John Comino. It is an important book as it was one of the first Greek books published in Australia for the Greeks back in the homeland. If they needed any more convincing of the golden opportunities awaiting them in Australia, it probably helped create interest amongst young Kytherians and other Greeks. Each of the men portrayed in the book paid for the honour, which, considering their reputation for thriftiness, must have made the decision a hard one for many a Kytherian.
The Kythera-Family.net team, with the support of the Nicolaus Aroney Trust and other generous sponsors, has undertaken to transcribe the entire book for the website and to translate it into English for the non-greek-speaking diaspora community. We hope to also produce a printed version of the translation of Life in Australia sometime in 2005.
For valuable information about the historical background of the publication of Life in Australia, please read the entry by Hugh Gilchrist I ZOI EN AFSTRALLIA in the History, General History section.
