Comino, Nick and Margarita

Nicholas (Nick) Comino, together with his sister, Melpomeni, arrived in Australia on the SS Cephee on 29 February, 1924. Nick had been born on the island of Kythera, a small island off the tip of the Peloponnesian peninsula in Greece, on 30 August, 1893, one of eight children of a small landholder. The family's means of survival, like that of most of the islanders, was subsistence farming together with the sale of a few crops such as olives, walnuts, almonds and pears. Eking out a living was an ongoing struggle. So, at a young age, Nick had gone to join an older brother, Dimitri, who had married and settled in Alexandria, Egypt. Dimitri, the father of Helen Conomos (who, like Nick and Margarita Comino, lived in the north-west NSW town of Wee Waa for many years), had supported Nick through school. On leaving school, Nick had been employed in a bank. During the First World War, from 1914 to 1919, he had served in the Greek navy. On discharge he had returned to Alexandria, where he was again employed in a bank and completed a university course in accountancy.

When his sister, Melpomeni, had been betrothed to a Greek man living in Australia, Nick had accompanied her to Australia for the wedding. Instead of returning to Egypt as he had intended, Nick had remained in Australia. He had bought a first business in Taralga, (near Goulburn in NSW), in 1925 and sold it in 1927. In November 1927, he married Margarita Galanis in Sydney and they moved to the new business he had bought in Oberon (west of Sydney near Bathurst, NSW), a refreshment room café. Their first three children, Anne, Mary and Helen, were born in Oberon.

Margarita Comino had been born on the island of Kythera on 9 August, 1896. in 1924, and then aged 28, she had come to Australia with her father, sister and two brothers. (Her mother had died when Margarita was fifteen years old. From that time on she had had the care of her three younger siblings, the youngest of whom had been an infant at the time of his mother‘s death.) In Australia her father had bought a fish café in Tasmania but he sold it within a couple of years and the family had returned to Sydney. Here Nick and Margarita were betrothed and married.

The couple remained in Oberon from 1927 to 1934 but the extremely cold climate of Oberon adversely affected Margarita‘s health. She had had three children in the first years of her marriage and the living conditions at the time were harsh. (For example the washing tubs were outdoors. Imagine doing the washing for three babies outdoors in freezing winter temperatures with no running hot water!) They therefore decided, on doctor‘s advice, to sell and move to a warmer climate. They at first moved to Hurstville in Sydney. But then in 1934 they became the purchases of the Wee Waa news agency and general store. Neither of them ever regretted it. The climate agreed with them, the news agency hours were not as extended and onerous as the working hours in a refreshment room, and they both loved the town. When the time came to leave Wee Waa, were truly sorry. Nick owned the Wee Waa news agency and general store from 1 July 1934 to 1 July 1963, a period of 29 years.

Over the years, Nick became increasingly active within the town. He was a civic-minded person and became a member and/or office-bearer, usually secretary or treasurer, of a number of Wee Waa's organisations. He belonged to the Rotary, the RSL, the school Parents and Citizens Association, the Scouts group, the MUIOOF Lodge, the Masonic Lodge, the Church of England, the Bowling Club and many other groups and committees. For many years he was a parish representative at the Anglican Synod. Both Nick and Margarita were Greek Orthodox in religion but, because there was no Greek Orthodox church in Wee Waa, they became part of the congregation of the Anglican church of Wee Waa. (On the death of his parents, Nick donated to the church a stained glass window in their memory and this window has been incorporated into the new church building.)

When Nick and Margarita first arrived in Wee Waa they found living there two young bachelor cousins, the only other residents in the town of Greek Origin. The two Andrews had also been born on Kythera. (The islands of Kythera and Castellorizo had been the places of origin of most of the pre-war Greeks residing in Australia.) On one occasion, a niece of Nick and Margarita came to visit and soon one of the Andrews had succumbed. Then another niece came to visit and the second Andrew was smitten. So the three kindred families were formed. As the news agency and the café of the two Andrews were just across the street from each other, the three families socialised a great deal.

During the war years 1939/45, Nick and Margarita were very concerned for the fate of their many relations and friends who still remained in Greece. This was especially so after the German invasion of Greece when famine conditions prevailed in the country. Nick and Margarita regularly sent food parcels to Greece to ease to some degree the privations of their loved ones there.

Pressure from the children eventually impelled Nick to sell out of Wee Waa. Because there was no high school in Wee Waa at the time, the three eldest children had been sent away for their secondary education. But, in 1951, Nick and Margarita bought a house in Maroubra, Sydney, where the youngest children lived while they completed high school or university. Margarita was splitting her time between staying in Wee Waa with Nick and looking after her younger children in Sydney. Then, between 1953 and 1960, three of the children married and two went overseas. Nick hung on in Wee Waa for another three years and then, reluctantly, sold out and moved to Sydney.


Nick Comino and his wife Margarita (nee Galanis)

Though he missed Wee Waa very much and was quite disconsolate at first, Nick soon got back into the swing in Sydney. He became a stalwart of the Maroubra Bowling Club, a member of Rotary and of a number of other organisations. These activities were continued until the impairments of age prevented further participation. Nick and Margarita also made three trips overseas, to Greece and Europe and, in one instance, to the Holy Lands.

Nick died on 10 December 1986 and Margarita on 23 February 1990. All their descendants miss them dearly.

By Mary Hope (Nick and Margarita's daughter) © December 2002