The Shop-keeping phenomenon. New South Wales. 19th century to WWI. Part B.

First section of

Chapter XI

Australians and Greeks
1 The Early Years
Halstead Press
Sydney
1992

pp.190-222

[Part B - Continuation of previous entry]

From Kythira, too, came several unrelated Kasimatis families. Antonios Kasimatis was a lad of 13, the eldest of seven children from the village of Drymona, when he reached Sydney in 1905. After working in Greek shops he was joined in 1910 by his younger brother Constantine, who had been working in Paris with his uncle, a sponge merchant, and in 1914 they and another brother, Vasilios, acquired a cafe in Wauchope. From another Kasimatis family, living in Frylingianika, came the two brothers Ioannis and Georgios in 1908, after some years in Athens. Four years later they opened their “Elite Refreshment Rooms” in Taree, where they became substantial property owners.
Another Kythiran family was that of Kritharis. Emmanouil Kritharis, reputed to have arrived in 1854, was a solitary man who is said to have died in Sydney in 1912 after making a large donation to the Greek war effort. Kharalambos Kritharis, after a stay in Athens, reached Sydney in 1907 and acquired a fruit shop at Ballina, and Georgios Kritharis set up shop in Katoomba in 1911. The brothers Theodoros and Panayiotis Kritharis, who came in 1909, opened two shops in Glen limes in partnership with their cousins Minas and Theodoros Tzortzopoulos, and also ran a motor-transport service between Glen Innes and Inverell. Theo Crithary, as he became known, was 15 when he landed in Sydney. Later he established a food-supply firm named Embros (“Forward”). He claimed to be the first importer of ouzo into Australia, selling it to several hotels; he also sold Greek olives to Woolworths. Another Kritharis, Spyridon, who arrived in 1913, bought a shop in Murrurundi; and yet another, Vretos, who was 19 when he landed in the same year, acquired an oyster-saloon in Stroud, partnered with an Athenian, Konstantinos Kanelis.
The long list of Kythiran shop-keepers also includes Theodoros Lakhanas (who came about 1900 and with his brother Ioannis acquired a shop in Kempsey); Panayiotis Gavrilis (who arrived from Potamos before 1904); Vretos Margetis in 1903 (partner in a Sydney shop with his brother Minas); Dimitrios Melitas in 1903 from Melitianika (partnering his brother Emmanouil in a shop in Gunnedah and later partnering others at Coolac and Cootamundra); Ioanms Zaglanakis, who arrived aged 13 and ultimately had a cafe in Surry Hills; Polykhronos Koronaios and Panayiotis Tzortzopoulos in 1901 after sojourns in Athens (acquiring two shops m Cobar); Nikolaos Katsoulis, in 1903 and Panayiotis Veneris, in 1906 (partners in a shop in Lockhart); and Georgios Vrakhnas in 1907 who eventually headed a large
Panayiotis Souris, the eldest of five children from the Kythiran village of Ayia Anastasia, reached Sydney in 1897. After working in the cafe of his uncle Spyridon Panaretos in Inverell, he bought the business. On his return to Kythira in 1912 he was drafted to serve in the Greek army in the Balkan War. After his discharge he married a Potamos girl, Maria Koronaiou, and brought her to Australia. In 1913, he established the Red Rose Cafe in Walcha, partnered by his brother-in-law Emmanouil Megalokonomos, who had come to Sydney in 1900, and whose brother Dimitrios became a shop-keeper in Wee Wan. Panayiotis Souris’s younger brothers Antonios and Dimitrios, who landed in Sydney in 1907, acquired three shops in Orange. Later in Uralla, Dimitrios opened the White Rose Cafe, planted an apple and cherry orchard and established an apple pulp factory, all successfully.
From Kythira, too, came several unrelated Kasimatis families. Antonios Kasimatis was a lad of 13, the eldest of seven children from the village of Drymona, when he reached Sydney in 1905. After working in Greek shops he was joined in 1910 by his younger brother Constantine, who had been working in Paris with his uncle, a sponge merchant, and in 1914 they and another brother, Vasilios, acquired a cafe in Wauchope. From another Kasimatis family, living in Frylingianika, came the two brothers Ioannis and Georgios in 1908, after some years in Athens. Four years later they opened their “Elite Refreshment Rooms” in Taree, where they became substantial property owners.
Another Kythiran family was that of Kritharis. Emmanouil Kritharis, reputed to have arrived in 1854, was a solitary man who is said to have died in Sydney in 1912 after making a large donation to the Greek war effort. Kharalambos Kritharis, after a stay in Athens, reached Sydney in 1907 and acquired a fruit shop at Ballina, and Georgios Kritharis set up shop in Katoomba in 1911. The brothers Theodoros and Panayiotis Kritharis, who came in 1909, opened two shops in Glen limes in partnership with their cousins Minas and Theodoros Tzortzopoulos, and also ran a motor-transport service between Glen limes and Inverell. Theo Crithary, as he became known, was 15 when he landed in Sydney. Later he established a food-supply firm named Embros (“Forward”). He claimed to be the first importer of ouzo into Australia, selling it to several hotels; he also sold Greek olives to Woolworths. Another Kritharis, Spyridon, who arrived in 1913, bought a shop in Murrurundi; and yet another, Vretos, who was 19 when he landed in the same year, acquired an oyster-saloon in Stroud, partnered with an Athenian, Konstantinos Kanelis.
The long list of Kythiran shop-keepers also includes Theodoros Lakhanas (who came about 1900 and with his brother Ioannis acquired a shop in Kempsey); Panayiotis Gavrilis (who arrived from Potamos before 1904); Vretos Margetis in 1903 (partner in a Sydney shop with his brother Minas); Diinitrios Melitas in 1903 from Melitianika (partnering his brother Emmanouil in a shop in Gunnedah and later partnering others at Coolac and Cootamundra); Ioannis Zaglanakis, who arrived aged 13 and ultimately had a cafe in Surry Hills; Polykhronos Koronaios and Panayiotis Tzortzopoulos in 1901 after sojourns in Athens (acquiring two shops m Cobar); Nikolaos Katsoulis, in 1903 and Panayiotis Veneris, in 1906 (partners in a shop in Lockhart); and Georgios Vrakhnas in 1907 who eventually headed a large catering business based on his “V and L” cake shop in Sydney, which employed nearly a hundred people.
Few letters remain which testify to the experience of these early Kythirans. One, written from Murwillumbah in August 1912 to an Uncle Georgios, was optimistic:

Well, we got the fruit shop for two days, at a rent of £7110-, but if the weather is fine we’ll make a lot of money, because there’ll be big crowds there. We’ll put up two stalls, like the ones we used to have at Ayios Theodoros.
We didn’t give up the shop, because it seems that the purchasers changed their minds; they were to get in in August, but we’re not giving it up; and we’re not concerned that, after repairing both shops, we’ve ordered an American soda fountain which will cost us £85; we desperately needed it. It turns drinks into lemonade or any other drink of that kind. It’ll cost us 3d a dozen instead of 2/- a dozen, which they now cost us, which was too much. When summer comes in about a month’s time they’ll send it tous from Sydney.

The same writer continued:

I don’t know what’s in your mind about Dimitrios. I advise you to send him to Australia. If you like, send him to us and I’ll guide his steps, because I’m greatly indebted to you for your kindness to me, and I’d like to do you a good turn. What would you do with him at home? True, he gives you a helping hand, but I suppose that if he sent you £250 a year from here it would be just as good. Wages now are fine. In Sydney, people work by the hour and do very well out of it. Well, sleep on it and make up your ~d... had my own boy been ten years old I would have brought him here.

Kythira’s most successful son in this generation, Nikolaos Lourantos, arrived in 1908. He came from the village of Karvounades, the eldest son in the large family of a builder and blacksmith, Panayiotis Lourantos, and his wife Angeliki.
After seven years schooling on the island he was learning his father’s trades when he went to Athens and worked for a time in an uncle’s cordial factory. Later he worked in an olive-oil factory on Kythira, but the prospects of local employment were limited, and tales told by another uncle returned from the United States pointed to a better life abroad. When his father wrote to a cousin in the New South Wales town of Grenfell and received an encouraging reply, Nicholas was sent there to join him.
He was 18 when he reached Fremantle, with little money and no English, in October 1908 on the steamer Seidlich with his younger brother George. In contrast with the yelling and disorder which they had witnessed in the ports of Greece, Egypt and Ceylon, the crowds on the Fremantle wharf were well behaved. Soon afterwards they came into “the incomparable harbour of Sydney”, as he later described it, “without a passport or other document, which in those days was not required”. A horse-cab took them and their small suitcases to their uncle Nicholas Aroney, whose restaurant near Central railway station was a favourite first place of call for newly arrived Greeks—”a veritable refuge” where they could often get work until they had found their feet. Years later Nicholas wrote:

The Greeks of Sydney then numbered between 100 and 150 men and three married women and they were all known to each other. Almost all were engaged in selling fish from their shops and oyster-saloons ... Everything was very cheap; a full meal for 10 cents; in the best hotels, 20 cents; lemonade etc, 3 cents; beer, wine and spirits, 6 cents; cigarettes, 3 to 6 cents a packet; and all articles of clothing at about the same level of prices; but we were at the lowest wage level—for the newly arrived migrant, a dollar a week, and up to three dollars for skilled workers. There were a few factories then, but they did not take foreigners, so we migrants were obliged to take jobs with fellow-countrymen, who, it should be noted, provided us with lodgings.

His brother George having found work with a bootmaker in Sydney, Nicholas took the train to Grenfell, 400 kilometers west, and marvelled at the passing scene:

I do not forget my first day going off to work, and the things seen from the train:
hundreds of rabbits running hither and thither and no one taking any interest in them.
I thought of days back in Kythira when I tramped the island to get, at the most, six birds.
I saw cows returning to the farms as if ownerless and flocks of sheep without a shepherd.
Australia, I decided, was quite a place.

In Grenfell he began work in Emmanouil Aronis’s fruit and confectionery shop, and its restaurant, the Thermopylae Dining Rooms, on the floor above. He was paid 7/6d a week, later raised to 15/-, with free board and lodging, and in his first year he saved nearly all his wages. He suffered a fall in which he broke his wrist, which was so badly set by a local doctor that it remained deformed for the rest of his life. Worse than that, however, was the loneliness. He and Emmanuel Aroney and another employee were the only Greeks in a town of 2,000 people, and his lack of English was a social barrier. “We were looked upon as being different, and we naturally felt isolated from the rest of the community”, he later wrote; but he offered no complaint, adding: “I liked Australia from the very first week I was there.”
He set himself the impossible task of teaching himself fluent English within three months, sitting up late with a bedside dictionary and struggling to understand the local newspaper, even when exhausted after a long day’s toil. He was greatly frustrated when he fell far short of his goal, but he persevered, and one day a girl who had come into the shop complimented him on his English. Greatly elated, he made good progress from then on.
A year or so later Aroney decided to sell his shop and restaurant and return to Kythira. Nicholas, who had saved £50 in 15 months, saw his chance. He persuaded a brother-in-law in the United States to put up half the purchase money and become a partner, and at the age of 20 he became part-owner of the “Thermopylae”. He sent for brother George, who was lonely and unhappy in Sydney, and George came and shared the long working day in the shop, in which Nicholas now installed a new machine: an “American soda fountain” for making aerated iced drinks. He changed his name to Laurantus and in 1911 was naturalised.
Apart from a rare visit to the cinema, the brothers had little time for recreation, but on some weekends they would cycle 30 miles to Young or Cowra for an evening’s conversation with the few Greeks there, riding back the next day. Then Nicholas, impressed by the thirst of Australia’s up-country drinkers, decided to become a hotel-keeper, and in 1912 sold the “Thermopylae” for £600 to George Lymbc,ridis and acquired the license of the Albion Hotel in Young. This was the beginning of his career as hotelier, grazier, cinema proprietor and munificent benefactor of Greek and Australian institutions. As Sir Nicholas Laurantus, he would become the first Greek-born Australian to receive a knighthood.
The youthfulness of many of these early Kythiran immigrants has been mentioned. In 1912 their passage through Port Said prompted that city’s Greek newspaper, Neos Syndesmos, to publish an article, “Emigration and Exploitation of Greek Youths”, echoing a familiar denunciation of emigration as a cultural haemorrhage of the Greek nation:

The constant stream of emigration of young boys from Cerigo, an Ioman island in the south of Greece, is continuing astonishingly, and recently about 30 boys aged between 8 and 15 years have been brought here to be shipped to Australia by the first mailboat. For these boys, ready employment is found on their landing in Australia by those to whom they are sent but, in spite of the measures taken by the Commonwealth of Australia, these patrons evade the law, overtly complying with the regulations but secretly getting these young boys to work for them—as we are told—under contracts made before leaving their country, and compelling them to fulfil their engagements.
What is to be regretted is that these boys, by staying in Australia for a long time, lose any Greek attributes they possessed, and, establishing themselves in Australia permanently, they are lost to Greece altogether. The Greek Government should take steps to stop this trafficking and prevent the little boys from emigrating, as the injury sustained by the State is great.

Peter Michelides, at that time an interpreter in the Customs Department m
Fremantle, received a copy of the article. Somewhat concerned, he wrote to the
Collector of Customs:

The assertion that many little boys from Cerigo are constantly arriving by mailboats to Australia is correct. But every one of these boys, on being asked whether he is engaged to work in Australia, and whether he is under contract, invariably replies that he is coming out to relatives who will take charge of him on arrival, and that, if under age, he will attend school, etc.
These boys never admit that they are under contract. The term contract very often is fully explained to them, if there is any doubt about their understanding of the word. These boys are all bound (almost without exception) to Sydney, and are engaged in Oyster, Fish or Fruit shops. The likelihood of their being engaged before they arrive in Sydney is very probable. A case of importing Greeks into the United States of America under contract, in which a Captain and Officers of a Greek mail boat were arrested and charged for the offence, was before the courts there recently. I do not know the result.

The Collector passed this to the Department of External Affairs in Melbourne, urging that special attention be paid to Greek boys arriving at any Australian port. External Affairs informed the Collectors of Customs in the other Australian states, and asked them to ascertain whether there was any truth in the allegation that Greek boys were being brought out under contract. The Collector in Melbourne replied that no Greek youths were recorded as arriving in the previous six months. The other Collectors made no reply, except the Collector in Sydney, who reported the arrival of 13 Greek boys aged between 13 and 16 in November 1912 on the German steamer Roon, and added:

The boys were detained on board in the first instance and were subsequently brought to the Customs House in the charge of Mr N.A. Comino and Mr M. Aroney, two local Greek residents. These gentlemen were questioned in accordance with Section 7 of the Contract Immigrants Act, which section was read to them. They replied to the question in the negative. The boys could not speak English, and a similar question was put to each one of them through Mr Comino, after the section had been read to them. The answer in every case was that they had not come to Australia under any contract or agreement. It was stated that they were all coming to friends and relatives in New South Wales or Queensland. The boys were permitted to land.

What emerged from this case was not a violation of Australian law, but an illustration of the family basis of the self-employed Greek’s business.
Numerous other Kythirans arrived not long before the First World War. Among these were Nikolaos Kalokairinos in 1906 who had a shop in Walgett in partnership with a cousin, Dimitrios Kaligeros, who later bought a shop in Temora, taking in his brothers Panayiotis and Spyridon as partners (in 1911, with Minas Kalopaidis, Kalokairinos acquired two shops in West Wyalong); Nikolaos and Theodoros Marselos, who had a shop and two large properties at Narrandera; Georgios Kypriotis, who came in 1906 and opened a restaurant and billiard room in 1910; Ioannis Moulos, in 1908, who had a shop in Singleton in 1911; Dimitrios Foiros (Jim Feros) in 1908, who returned to Greece to serve in the Balkan War but emigrated again in 1914 and had a shop in Mullumbimby; Kyriakos Baveas and Theorodos Fardoulis, who had two shops in Narrabri in 1909; Panayiotis Stathis, shop-keeper and proprietor of the “Athenaeum Library” in Hay; Ioannis and Panayiotis Baveas, who had a shop in Barraba in 1911; Athanasios Frantzis (Arthur Francis), who had a delicatessen in Merrylands for many years before returning to Kythira; and Vretos Kypriotis, who in 1911 had a shop in Harden and a share of one in Yass.
Next in number to the Kythirans were immigrants from Ithaca, such as the brothers Stamelatos—Efstathios, Markos and Nikolaos—who traded as Stamell Brothers and who ultimately owned three fish restaurants, beginning with Efstathios’s establishment at 130 King Street. Other Ithacans were Ioannis Morfesis, who came in 1908 and had a shop in Lithgow; Panos Koronaios, who had refreshment rooms in Glen limes from 1904 to 1911; Theodoros Kouvelis, who had a shop in Narromine in 1905; and various members of the Raftopoulos families:
Xenofon, from Ayia Saranta; Gerasimos (alias Spozis) from the same village, who came via the United States; and Nikolaos and Dionysios Kouvaras. The latter was 19 years old when he arrived by train from Melbourne and set up his fish shop at
126 King Street. A founder of Sydney’s Greek Orthodox Community, Dionysios is said to have been the first Greek chairman of a limited company in Australia.
Two other prominent Ithacans were Gerasimos Zervos, who came in 1902, and Georgios Paizis, from Stavros in 1910. Zervos opened a barber’s shop and later founded Sydney’s first Greek social club, the “Greek Club” (Elliniki Leskhi), which had an exclusively Greek membership. Occupying a three-storey building at 37 Park Street, it had a meeting hall, coffee-shop, tobacconist’s and hairdresser’s shop, billiard room and conference room. Zervos, a Greek Orthodox Community councillor, also helped to found a short-lived Sydney branch of the Athens-based patriotic association, the “Panhellenic Affiance” (Panellinios Synaspisinos).
Georgios Paizis, eldest of five children, left school in Ithaca in 1893 to work in his father’s footwear factory, and in 1906 worked in the Perpinia shoe-factory in Athens, studying shoe design and manufacture at a technical college in the evenings. Back in Ithaca for his sister’s wedding to an Ithacan returned from Sydney, he accepted his father’s suggestion that he travel with the newly-weds to Australia on the German liner Barbarossa. In Sydney, after working in his brother-in-law’s cafe, he took a job in the “Angelos” shoe-factory, owned by a Cretan. He tried to enrol in a school in Oxford Street and was rejected, probably for lack of sufficient English, but he persevered, and after a year spent much of his small savings on English lessons from the stage actor Harry Liston. He then took a course in shoe design at Sydney Technical College, gained its diploma three years later and began a career in shoe-making.wbiclkwOuld last for nearly 60 years.

Dionysios Frangos, an Ithacan who wrote from Dubbo in 1902 to his sister Eftykhia, apologised for not returning earlier:

I would have been in Ithaca instead of writing now, but I miscalculated and perhaps I won’t leave until next June, because I could not only lose what I have achieved but also become a laughing-stock if I showed fear now. It’s not just for the money that I’m staying on, but because my very existence would be ruined, and I would be in a mess, and you wouldn’t have the courage to say that you still had a ray of hope for me. Both you and mother should forgive me for not pretending and for writing the truth.

In these years several Kefalonians also arrived, among them Thomas Georgiatos, who left his native island when he was 12. He went first to Suez and thence to the Belgian Congo, and from there to Johannesburg, and finally, when he was about 21, to Sydney, where his experience as a cook in a Johannesburg hotel and his production of references in English enabled him to get a job immediately as a cook in the Arcadia Hotel in Pitt Street—a head-start for a newly arrived Greek, since those who had no English could usually find initial employment only with other Greeks. Later he married a daughter of the Tavlaridis family.
In 1905, Adam Tavlaridis left his village of Sarkis on the north shore of the Dardanelles and came to Australia, followed by his four younger brothers. Seven years later, because of earthquakes on the Gallipoli peninsula and anxiety about Turkish intentions towards Greek residents, he brought out his mother and his five sisters: Anthi, Vasiliki, Anna, Maria and Smaragda. It was then unusual for a Greek family to emigrate as a unit; normally a man would return to Greece to seek a bride, or be followed to Australia by a wife or fiancee after he had established his business. Most families which emigrated as a unit were those which faced an uncertain future in Asia Minor, where, amongst other contingencies, a Greek might find himself unwillingly called up to serve in the Turkish army.
The Tavlaridi daughters found husbands in Australia: Anthi became Mrs Demerizou (Demer); Vasiliki, Mrs Constantine; Anna, Mrs Laridi (Laird); Maria, Mrs Marsellou; and in 1914 Smaragda married the Kefalonian Thomas Georgiatos. Among the Georgiatos children was Athanasios, who became the second Greek Australian to enter the legal profession, better known as Sir Arthur George, Australian Football Federation president and noted philanthropist. Adam Tavlaridis’s brother Mikhail became known in Sydney as Mick Adams. From their village of Sarkis also came Georgios Lymberidis (George Limbers), who became a shop-keeper in Grenfell and later a successful wheat-fanner and the owner of several large cattle-grazing properties. He married another Tavlaridi daughter, Eirmni, whose brother-in-law, a Landis, had emigrated to avoid the Turkish call-up.
A few Greeks came to Sydney from other islands. Angelos Zakhary, from Samos in 1884, became an oysterman and fruiterer; Panayiotis Sarandel, whose provenance is uncertain, also came in 1884 and became an oysterman; Lambros Mitchell, probably from Syros in 1887, settled at Moulamein; Nikolaos Bachalis, from Limnos in 1888, became a store-keeper in Young; John Candler, from Crete in 1890, became a fishmonger in Waterloo. Georgios Kaferendopoulos, from Syros, had two shops in Sydney but left them in 1912 to serve in the Balkan War.
From the Peloponnisos came even fewer, among them Panayiotis Frantzis, born in Kalavryta but reared in Egypt. In 1902 he emigrated to South Africa, but an economic slump there induced him to go on to Sydney, where he opened a small shop in 1911. Later he acquired three more businesses, including the “Athenian Club” at 208 Castlereagh Street, patronised by Sydney Greeks and providing a coffee-shop, restaurant, billiard room and tobacconist’s and barber’s shop. Another Peloponnisian, Georgios Varvaressos, left his olive and orange groves near Neapolis in 1914 and worked in Sydney as a bread-carter, aided by his son Stephen, before acquiring a butcher’s shop in Surry Hills.
Broken Hill’s earliest recorded Greek was Apostolos Mikhailidis, who left Turkey m 1886 and was a fishmonger in Broken Hill before 1904, having travelled overland from Victoria when he was 14. Several Greeks, however, were resident there in 1891, according to the census, and some were working in the mines in 1912. Others identified are Ioannis Perdikis, who owned a fish shop, Iraklis Antonios, from Samos, a cafe proprietor, and Dimitrios Kouroupis, from Hydra, a fruiterer, who married an Australian girl.
Newcastle’s Greeks formed a larger group than most outside the capital cities. Oral tradition has it that a Greek seaman, stranded in Newcastle when his ship departed, settled there early in the 1880s and became a fishmonger. What is fairly certain is that in 1885 Efstratios Androulakis, a Cretan, and Peter Sotiriou, who may have been a Cypriot, leased fish shops in Newcastle’s Blane Street, which is now part of Hunter Street. Although they did not stay long, they may claim to have been the city’s first Greek residents. Others followed them into shop-keeping, in a scene characterised by short-term occupation, with one Greek selling out to another, and by the growing preponderance of Ithacans.
Androulakis had landed in Sydney in 1877. His Newcastle shop was probably located between the Corona Building and the Kensington Theatre. After a year he sold it to another Greek, George Peters, and acquired a shop at 56 Hunter Street. Two years later he moved to Melbourne, opened another shop, was naturalised and in 1888 married Athina Florence. After returning to Newcastle he opened an oyster-saloon at 110 Hunter Street but then sold it to a relative, Georgios Androulakis, and went to Brisbane, when he died in 1906, aged 61. His widow became the owner of land at Lismore and Bangalow in northern New South Wales, and in Sydney.
Peter Sotiriou, Newcastle’s other pioneer, likewise sold his lease in 1886 and moved elsewhere. In that year George Peters and Spyridon Marks arrived in Newcastle. Marks, from Kastellorizo, opened a fruit shop and managed it until 1898; Peters stayed only two years and sold the Blane Street shop, which he had bought from Stratis Androulakis, to Georgios Androulakis, who changed his name to George Andrews. The latter, who bought a house near Civic, was probably the first Newcastle Greek to own a dwelling apart from his shop; but in 1889 he sold his Hunter Street oyster-saloon to two partners, Constantine and Margetis, and also his other properties, and left the district.
Newcastle’s first Ithacan was Efstathios Mavrokefalos, known as Stathy Black, who settled there in 1889 and in the next year bought Stratis Androulakis’s shop at 56 Hunter Street. He managed it as an oyster-saloon until 1905, having been joined by his brother Ioannis (John Black) and in 1900 by another brother, Harry. Other early Ithacans included Panayiotis (Peter) Pa.xinos, from Stavros in 1890, a fruiterer in Hunter Street in 1897; Constantine Vretos, who came in 1890 and was a waiter in John Petrale’s cafe at 41 Hunter Street; the brothers Makris, the first of whom, Gerasimos (Jerry Macree) arrived in 1892; Ioannis Parolis, an 1893 arrival, who had a shop until 1899; Spyridon Paizis, from Stavros, who in 1899 partnered Stathy Black in a shop at 66 Hunter Street; Minas Kasos, an 1899 arrival; and Constantine Raftopoulos, who reached Australia in 1900 via South Africa and who partnered a brother in an oyster-saloon.
Newcastle’s non-Ithacans included Efstathios Meletios, from Kastellorizo, and I.B. Nichols, who came in 1891; Panayiotis Sarandel, who had an oyster-saloon in Hunter Street from 1892 to 1896; V. Patras, in 1892; John Petrale, who landed in Australia in 1887 and had a fish shop at 41 Hunter Street; John Nicholas, a shop-keeper from 1893 to 1896; and George Mercatus, in 1896. Andreas Mitchell from Corfu, and Dimitrios Kofteros from Kastellorizo, had oyster-saloons, Kofteros in 1897 and Mitchell before 1902. Ioannis and Thomas Dionysiou (Donnisou) and H. Daregas had arrived by 1899, and George Karangis and John and George Lucas by 1900.
Greek Orthodox Church records indicate that Minas Vartholomaios and his wife Kallista, née Filippou, were resident in Newcastle in September 1899, when their son Dionysios was baptised there by Father Serafeim Phocas, visiting from Sydney. A list of 25 Newcastle Greeks who donated £23/lls/6d to Sydney’s Holy Trinity Church in 1900 mentions also Dimitrios Kolyvas, the owner of Newcastle’s Brown Derby Restaurant, named after the “Brown Derby” in Hollywood, where Kolyvas had been employed as a dancer.
In 1901 Georgios and Efstathios Kalopaidis, trading as Calopedis Brothers, opened a cafe in West Maitland, and in 1903 the Ithacan Ioannis Zervos arrived from Melbourne. By 1904 there were about 15 Greek businesses in Newcastle, the majority of their owners coming from the Ithacan villages of Stavros, Lefki, Exokhi and Ayia Saranta and working as fruiterers or as fish-shop or restaurant proprietors or employees, most of them living in rooms over their shops. Nearly all the city’s later Greeks followed them into the food trades. Karnakis and Rokkos became partners in an oyster-saloon in Lambton in 1906, and George Karangis seems to have tried to establish one at Wallsend. Others included Panayiotis Frangos, who arrived from Lefki via America in 1907 and married a Kominou daughter, and Konstantinos Kamenis, from Khios, who in 1907 married a Tasmanian, Emily Wright, in an Anglican Church in Newcastle.
A Peloponnisian who reached Newcastle in 1907 via the United States was Angelos Tarifas, from Aristokerasia near Tripolis in Arkadia. In 1908 he established the Niagara Confectionery Company, and in his Niagara Cafe at 112 Hunter Street he introduced to Newcastle the American soda fountain and the milk-bar. His nephew George Peter Kostakis, also from Aristokerasia, joined him in 1910. The Niagara was reputed to provide the best milkshakes in Newcastle. Tarifas, however, who changed his name to Burgess, returned to Greece during the First World War and died there.
A Spartan, Panayiotis Mantzaris, came to Newcastle in 1907 when he was 20 and acquired a tobacconist’s shop in Perkins Street. Well-educated and an aesthete, he later returned to Greece and established a tobacco factory which took orders from Greeks in New South Wales. Other Greeks who came at about this time were the brothers Georgios and Theodoros Koutsovelis, from Kioni; the Zervos brothers Ioannis and Panayiotis; and Georgios Soflanos, from Frykies in Ithaca, who acquired the Cosmopolitan Cafe and who also joined the firm of Denes and Denes (Dionysiou?), which had a large fish shop in Hunter Street.
The 1911 census shows 68 persons “born in Greece”, including three women, living in Newcastle—but the true number of Greeks there must have been nearer a hundred. Thereafter it grew slowly. Kouvaras and Patrick in 1910 opened a confectionery shop which lasted two years; Khristos Papadopoulos (Chris Pappas), who had left Stavros in 1912 when he was 12, worked in his uncle Constantine Raftopoulos’s cafe before moving to Melbourne; Salieris and Marks had a coffee-shop in 1913; and in 1914 the brothers Sykiotis (Scott) opened their Civic Tea Rooms. By that time the list of residents included the names of Kominos, Lekatsas, Metaxas and Galatis.
Volatility characterised the early Greek businesses in Newcastle: 110 Hunter Street went through four changes of Greek ownership in six years; 56 Hunter Street, five changes in 14 years; 47 Blane Street, seven in 15 years; and 41 Hunter Street, three in 9 years. Greek partnerships—29 between 1886 and 1914-were also numerous. Most of the city’s Greeks were very young and many stayed only a brief time, especially during the economic depression of 1893; but a few stayed longer: Con Macree for 12 years, George Paizis for 15, Alex Paxinos for 22, James Cofteros for 31, Constantine Vretos for 32 and Stathy Black, Peter Paxinos, John Nicholas and Stathis Meletios for many years. John Black stayed until he was 91. Even in 1914, however, the Newcastle Greeks remained a somewhat nomadic colony of about 200. Their proximity to Sydney—an easy train trip—and the occasional availability of Mr Phocas’s priestly ministrations reduced their need of a communal organisation, which did not eventuate until after the First World War.
In New South Wales as a whole the population “born in Greece” had risen from 255 in 1891 to 822 in 1911, including 58 females; Greek Orthodox Church membership rose from 253 to 614 (plus another 1,144 described in the census as “Greek Catholic”). If one adds to these some of the people recorded as born in Turkey, Egypt, Crete and Cyprus, the state’s ethnic Greeks would by 1911 have totalled 900 or more, including nearly 100 women; and more and more of them entered the food trades.
Later arrivals included Zakharias Simos in 1912, who toiled a 16-hour day in Sydney fish shops and who would three years later acquire his own restaurant, the celebrated Paragon in Katoomba. Georgios Khristianos, from Logothetianika in Kythira in 1912, acquired a shop in Tumut, and the brothers Panayiotis and Nikolaos Kontoleontos acquired two shops-the Canberra Cafe and the Excelsior—from another Kythiran, Konstantinos Kritikos, in Queanbeyan. In 1913 Mikhail Katsoulis, from Potamos, partnered his brother Theodoros in a shop in Bellingen. Panayiotis Mazarakis, also from Potamos, and his brother Andreas became shop-keepers in Forbes. The Kythiran Georgios Kolyvas became a shop-keeper in Narrabri; and Dimitrios Papadopoulos, from Aronianika, after working in the George Street restaurant of his cousin Vretos Margetis, acquired two shops in Grafton.
Shortly before the outbreak of war the brothers Sarantos and Leomdas Diakopoulos, partnered by Sarantos Zantiotis, acquired two shops in Parkes; Panayiotis Kypriotis, a shop in Quirindi; Vretos and Emmanouil Alifieris, from Potamos, a shop in Wellington; Ioannis Tambakis, a shop in Wagga Wagga; Antonios Trifyllis and Dionysios Panaretos, two shops in Tamworth; and Emmanouil Mavromatis, after a stay in the United States, a shop in Sydney. Spyridon Mylonopoulos, from Aronianika, and his sons Panayiotis and Dimitrios, also became Sydney shop-keepers, and Panayiotis Sarantakos (alias Zantiotis) became a wholesale fruit merchant, trading in Sydney as the P.E. Sarandakos Fruit Exchange.
Not all these enterprises succeeded. Bankruptcy records show that some fell by the financial way-side: between 1888 and 1914 more than 33 Greeks in various New South Wales occupations were declared bankrupt. Among them were numerous shop-keepers, two restaurant proprietors, a hotel-keeper, two waiters, a produce merchant, a stage carpenter, two bootmakers, a tailor, a baker and a cook. The majority, however, prospered.