(04) Dimitrios Aronis-Beys: Mackay – The Early Years
(An extract from the memoirs of Prof. Manuel J. Aroney)
From 1923 to 1926 Dimitrios Aronis, now widely known as Jim Aroney, was a cook in the Townsville Cafe located in Flinders Street West. He became naturalized as an Australian citizen on the 7th of September 1925 – in the certificate of naturalization he is recorded as James Aroney (also known as Moustakos). The Townsville Cafe, owned by his cousins Cosmas (Charlie) Marendy and Peter Hlentzos in partnership with my father, was making very little profit so Stamatina urged him to search elsewhere for a business opportunity. In 1927 my father went to Mackay and with money he’d saved, bought a building which though old and dilapidated, was centrally located in the main street with a water trough for horses out the front. He converted the ground floor into a cafe; the upstairs section and a closed-in veranda overhanging the footpath and supported by timber posts were made into bedrooms. Thus was started the Central Cafe.
The Central Café, Mackay, North Queensland.
Photo taken circa 1930
Pictured left to right: the café cook, my father Dimitrios Aroney, my uncles Andy and Peter Aroney, and the café waitresses.
Chris Tziolis, in Mackay at the time, described my father as a practical man who worked very hard from early morning to late at night and “a gentle person who wouldn’t hurt a fly”. Someone labelled him “the boss” or “bossi”, in Greek-speak; this was how the Mackay Greeks referred to him thereafter. My parents lived in a room upstairs so mum, known to the locals as Stella, was able to devote nearly all of her time working in the shop. This was a country town cafe typical of that era, providing meals such as steak with eggs, onions and chips, mixed grills, bacon and eggs, meat pies, fish and chips, sandwiches, etc., the usual fare expected by Australian customers. Troubles there certainly were, for some of the locals hated foreigners and could be belligerent especially if drunk. Mackay was a centre of the sugar industry and Saturday night was always busy as large numbers of cane cutters came from the farms for a night on the town. After much beer was downed, those not paralytic on the footpaths would often be spoiling for a fight and who better to pick on than the foreigner in the cafe? Another factor bringing unease and concern was the increasing peril of the Great Depression which according to reports from overseas and from within Australia was threatening ruinous times ahead. Stamatina wrote to Nicholas in Nowra requesting that one of her brothers be sent to Mackay to help out in the cafe, so in mid 1929 Andrew (by then called Andy) came to Mackay and a few months later Peter, Kathleen and daughters Eileen and Theodora (Thea) joined them. All lived in the rooms above the shop. Peter had been sent by Nicholas to get him away from the undesirable ambience of the billiard rooms.
About a year later the cafe was renovated. The property was wide, about twenty-five feet, and this allowed three shop windows and two entrances (as shown in the photograph). The middle display window was full of seafood and had a cool fresh appearance because of a constant light flow of water down the glass panels to a bed of crushed ice. Inside the shop was a food counter parallel to the eastern wall on the right, a confectionery display case and another counter for drinks such as milkshakes and fruit juices on the left and, further in, a large dining area divided by a partition into two sections, one for men and the other for ladies (who could be accompanied by males). Despite the Depression, business improved, helped by the opening of the Princess Picture Theatre close by which brought in more customers.
After a few years, my father decided to sell the business to Andy and Peter but kept the building which he leased to them. For a time he worked on wages as a cook and kitchen hand then with my mother went to Sydney where they bought a small brick and tile home at 12 Stream Street, just off Yurong Lane on the southern side of William Street in East Sydney. He worked for a year or so in Sydney and it was there that my mother, who had become pregnant, gave birth to me on the 31st of August 1932 in St. Ronans Private Hospital, South Kensington. I was to be their only child. Following Greek tradition, I was christened Emmanuel in honour of my paternal grandfather; Godfather was Vasilis Georgopoulos (Tzortzopoulos), a well-known Sydney identity, who owned the Athenian Club in Castlereagh Street.
Life became very difficult during the Depression so the Sydney home was rented out and the family returned to Mackay where my parents bought a North Queensland style house at 5 Macalister Street, just a few minutes walk from Victoria Street and the Mackay main shopping centre. It was of wooden construction with fibro cement outer walls and galvanized iron roof and was sited only a few hundred yards from the southern bank of the Pioneer River around which Mackay town had been built. The house was fairly safe from Summer floods brought on by cyclones and by torrential monsoon rains most prevalent in the January to March period as it was built on the high part of the town and, as well, it stood on timber posts with the floor about two and a half feet off the ground. The front was covered with honeysuckle vine which in the flowering season turned to a panoply of bright tubular orange blossoms; it was very pretty and conveyed a warm homey feeling.
Andoni (Tony) Prineas came to Mackay in 1934 with his wife Yiannoula, who had travelled to Australia with my mother, and their infant son Nick. Our house was located on a large block of land and my parents constructed a small two-storey home in the back yard connected to the front house by a galvanized iron roof so it could pass as an extension, enabling council approval to be obtained. The Prineas family were warmly greeted as kinsfolk from Kythera and accommodated in the back house. Two years later, in 1936, they had a baby daughter, Marina, and at the baptism my mother became her Godmother thus cementing an already close relationship. Tony Prineas was a sharp and clever man – the local Greeks called him “o dikiyoros” (the lawyer). He convinced my father, who it must be said was a naive trusting individual, that they should go into business together. Neither had any cash but Andy loaned my father eight hundred pounds to finance the setting up of the Rose Marie Cafe in Wood Street Mackay. My strong recollections, even though I was very young, were of Tony Prineas standing behind the counter near the cash register talking and joking with the customers, collecting money and running the show, while my father was in the kitchen at the back cooking and sweltering over a large stove. Sadly, about 1939, the business went broke and my father was left with the debts. Tony Prineas lingered on in Mackay for about two years, though not in our house, then left for a new venture in New South Wales. He and I met in Sydney decades later when he was an old man. I became close friends with his son Nick and daughter-in-law Katie.
In 1932 Peter Aroney and his family left their living quarters above the Central Cafe and moved to a house they bought in Macalister Street, several blocks south of our home and very close to the Central State Primary School. Years later they relocated to a larger home in Nebo Road, further from town and at that time a new and prestigious residential area. Andy continued to live above the shop.
A fruit and vegetable business next door to the Central Cafe was for sale in 1934 and Andy and Peter bought it, primarily to prevent a possible opposition cafe being set up there. Having refurbished it, they opened the Niagara Milk Bar which they placed under the management of George Kepriotis, Stamatoula’s brother who had come from Nowra. Unfortunately, George was not a good businessman, being more preoccupied with fishing, hunting and gambling, so it was no surprise that the shop wasn’t going well. Andy and Peter decided to take it over themselves and they sold the Central Cafe business to a man from Rhodes called Atherinos Atherinou whom I remember as very likeable and about two years later it was resold to a Greek-Cypriot, George Pavlidis, who ran the shop for the latter part of the Second World War.
Towards the end of the thirties my father contracted a builder to elevate our Macalister Street house to six feet above the ground. This was no small undertaking but the group hired was very experienced with this kind of job. Jacks were placed in appropriate places under the house and gradually it was lifted to the required height and then rested on rows of solid thick timber poles which were embedded in concrete below ground level. As well, the house was extended to create a large enclosed veranda at the back so it was now quite spacious with four bedrooms, a kitchen, an inside bathroom and toilet and plenty of living area. The elevation provided a cooling effect while the space beneath the house was useful for a number of purposes: clothes washing facilities (a large copper vessel heated by wood fire), lines for drying clothes during the wet season, storage space and, importantly for me, extra room where my friends and I could play.
My father, mother and myself in the front yard of our house in Mackay, circa 1946-47.
In the backyard we had a large mango tree, custard apple shrubs and pawpaw trees, the latter in great profusion. One of my favourite pastimes was picking a ripe pawpaw off the tree, cutting it in half, scooping out the seeds, filling it with ice cream and eating it – positively delicious. My mother conscientiously tended a sizeable vegetable garden and, further down the back yard, a chicken-wire enclosed fowl house. This was in addition to her many duties involving house and family. The back dwelling referred to earlier was rented for some years to a quiet gentle elderly Australian called “Zakeos” by the Greeks and he made a living from an old style taxi which he parked under the now-elevated front house. It was convenient having him on call, though for us use of a taxi was a rare luxury.
