Anthony Flaskas. Temora, 1989.
'Yes, I was a pioneer....1913...The old people [my parents], they sent me to Australia...they was very, very poor...It was America or Australia. They pick Australia...it was a new country and you had more chance....The time I was there, Kythera was 15,000 people...All migrate to Australia...We were the seventh state of the Commonwealth of Australia...about 3000 people now [left on Kythera]....
...Fifteeen [years of age] since I left the school there [on Kythera]...Six boys and an old man named Melitas....He was looking after us [on the trip out]...we were [all] trying to better ourselves...Everything was new as soon as I left Kythera. Of course, I'd never been outside Kythera. I was fifteen years old and I [had] never left. I never knew anything except history - what I learnt it in school....I knew nothing else.
Well,the old man he mortgaged his home [to pay for my passage out]....I landed in Sydney with two shillings and sixpence - half a crown, I had half a crown...The time I come to Australia, I reckon it was the golden age of Australia. For the simple reason they had no paper money at all. It was all silver, gold, and copper...The best of all, no income tax.
The only thing of course, we couldn't get a job...you have to go to the Greek coffee house [to get a job]. You see, it was a very, very strict White Australia...the White Australia Policy...You see, were were fighting them days. Really we were fighting for our existence...we were fighting for our life. That's how hard it was..Third class citizens was us really - third class, not second class, third class!'
Anthony spent most of his working life engaged in Greek cafes and clubs in NSW country towns as well as in Sydney. He regularly sent money back to his family in Greece and during the 1920's was able to bring out three brothers, a sister and her husband. In 1937 he married Efstathia Liapis. 'She was thirty-six and I was forty...Oh yes, I didn't marry a chicken, and she didn't marry a chicken either.' They had three children - two boys, Andrew and Nicholas, and a girl Vassey. Nicholas died in 1959 and Efstathia in 1966. Anthony retired to Temora in 1974 and lives with his daughter.
'I'm the only one left out of eleven children [his brothers and sisters]. Never went back to Greece. Naturalised in 1920.'
From, Images of Home, pp. 91-92.
*There are about 33 other Kytherian images and entries in the book, Images of Home.
Author's:Effy Alexakis & Leonard Janiszewski
When Published:1995
Publisher:Hale & Iremonger Publishers
Available:Hale & Iremonger Publishers, 02 9565 1955
Description:285x210mm, 160 pages.
Available from:
Hale & Iremonger
PO Box 205,
Alexandria, NSW. 2015.
Ph: 02 9656 2955
Fax: 02 9550 2012
Eml: [email protected]
Website: www.haleiremonger.com
Documentary photographer Effy Alexakis and social historian Leonard Janiszewski have been researching their history and contemporary presence since 1982, and have made many field trips throughout both Australia and Greece, painstakingly piecing together what has become a giant jigsaw puzzle.
Effy Alexakis:
"The idea for this project began in Greece in 1985 whilst I was staying with the parents of family friends in the village of Mitata, on the island of Kythera. Although I had already noticed many deserted homes throughout Greece, it wasn't until I saw a whole street of deserted homes and ventured inside them that I realised that many of the people had left their homes with the intention of returning. Letters, photographs and other personal documents had been left behind. Like pieces of a huge jigsaw puzzle, these items provided small clues about the life within these homes. Australia's migration history is to be found in these homes. Unfortunately, through time, much is being lost."
For a digital archive of photographs, see, also,
http://www.austhistmuseum.mq.edu.au/greek/intro.htm
For other entries about Effy and Leonard, search internally, under Alexakis or Janiszewski.
