The Voyage of Their Life
Page 44
Vassiliki, who has anglicised her name to Vi, is recalling her arrival as we sit in her comfortable brick home in Sydney’s upper north shore where large blocks of land stand in tree-lined streets and cafés are few and far between. I found her thanks to Mary Conomos, my best friend from Waverley Primary School. As I hadn’t had much luck locating the Greek passengers, I turned to Mary for help. Recognising some of the surnames I read out from the passenger list as belonging to Kytherians, Mary had suggested placing a notice in the Kytherian newsletter to publicise my search. A few weeks later, a friendly woman called me. ‘I’ve just read the newsletter, darling, and I think you’re looking for me!’ It was Mattie’s friend Vi who had sailed on the Derna as a ten year old with her brother and two sisters.
It would be difficult to imagine a bigger contrast to the stony terrain of Kythera than the lush region in which Mackay is situated. Halfway between Brisbane and Cairns, it is surrounded by fields of sugar cane which provide a tropical backdrop for cars that whiz along the Pacific Highway on their way to the holiday playgrounds of far north Queensland. Cut in half by the Pioneer River, Mackay is a compact town with a neat grid of straight streets over which, during burn-off time, hangs the bitter-sweet smell of burning cane.
Vi was amazed by the size of her brother’s restaurant. In 1948, the Tourist Restaurant in Victoria Street was the biggest and most popular in town. For the family, life revolved around the shop and George’s word was law. The whole family lived upstairs and spent most of their waking hours working downstairs. On rainy days when there was no work done on the properties, the farm-hands would come into town, sprawl their sunburned legs under the tables and order huge meals while the staff ran in and out of the kitchen balancing plates of grilled steaks, eggs and chips.
From the moment they arrived, Vi and her brother worked in the restaurant before school, at lunchtime and after school. When the school day ended Australia ceased to exist, because their siblings always spoke Greek among themselves.
‘We never went out to play,’ Vi says without any rancour. ‘I didn’t question it. I didn’t have any standard of comparison and did what I was told.’ They wiped and set the tables, cleaned the cutlery and cut fruit for the fruit salad. After school, their classmates would head down Gordon Street to Town Beach, tear off their shoes and socks and splash in the shallow water and chase each other, whooping and shrieking, along the stretch of sand and mud flats. Australian children didn’t have to sweep floors, wipe dishes and set tables in a restaurant.
Vi and Petro’s only outing was to their weekly violin lesson with a strict nun. They didn’t mind the lessons, but as they didn’t do their homework they were invariably in trouble. One afternoon as they dawdled towards their lesson, Petro suddenly asked, ‘Does she ever give you the cane?’
Vi giggled. ‘I get it on the legs every week because I don’t practise.’
They stopped and looked at each other, the same thought forming in their minds. Her dark eyes brimming with devilry, Vi tugged her brother’s arm. ‘Let’s go and play. George won’t know!’ There were swings and roundabouts in the park, and for the next few weeks they felt like caged animals let loose in the savannah.
Unfortunately for them, the nun rang George a few weeks later to ask what had happened to her pupils. When they ran home from the park that afternoon, he was waiting for them and from his expression they knew the game was up. But although she was scared, Vi stood up to her older brother.
‘She’s horrible, she gives us the cane! We don’t want to go back!’
To their relief, George didn’t punish them or insist that they go back, but he soon found another teacher who gave lessons at the café, making it impossible for them to play truant again.
Vi and Petro were the only foreign children at school. As they couldn’t speak English, they started in first class and gradually went up one class at a time until they reached their own age group. ‘We had the most wonderful headmaster, Mr Cairns,’ Vi recalls with affection. ‘Every lunchtime he would teach me a few extra words in his office to help me catch up. One day when everyone had to recite a poem, Petro and I didn’t know any English ones so he said we could recite a Greek one instead. While I was in the middle of it, one of the boys started giggling. Mr Cairns said, “It’s rude to laugh at other languages!” and gave him the cane! When he left the school a year later, he came and said goodbye to Petro and me. He shook our hands and said, “I hope when we meet again you’ll speak perfect English!” I’ve never forgotten him.’
Vi looks wistful. ‘I liked school and would have liked to stay on, but that wasn’t to be,’ she says. ‘As soon as I turned fifteen, I had to leave because my brother needed me in the shop. I was upset about it, but there was nothing I could do. I was brought up that family was everything and you had to respect your elders. You didn’t argue or answer back.’
Vi became the cashier and trained new girls. ‘By then we had a staff of about forty, together with cooks and cleaners,’ she says. ‘I can’t say I enjoyed the work but there was no choice. My brother was a hard boss, stern and tough, but he was fair. That’s why he succeeded in life. It was a big responsibility for him to bring us out when we were so young. He was our father figure and whatever he said went. But Petro and I were very close and did everything together. We’re still very close, even though I’m in Sydney and he lives on the Gold Coast.’
Unlike Vi, however, Petro felt rebellious about working in the café. Even now, while talking about those early years in Mackay, his voice has a resentful edge.
‘George was very hard on us,’ he says. ‘Before school I had to fill up the salt shakers and sugar bowls and wipe down all the tables. At lunchtime, I had to stand on a Coca Cola crate to reach the sink and wash the dishes. After school, we had to cut up two boxes of apples and pawpaws and a box of pears and pineapples to fill up two five-gallon containers of fruit salad. Too bad if you had homework. Then there was the washing up. There was no time to play, no time for anything except school and work at the restaurant. I’d never been to the pictures or to a dance. All I did was wipe dishes and cut fruit. George was always going crook on us. We weren’t allowed to make any noise in case the customers heard us. At school, the other kids sometimes bashed me up, called me “little dago bastard” and ripped my shirts, and when I got home, my brother went crook on me for ruining good clothes.’
Even his first taste of ice cream at the restaurant has left an unpleasant memory. ‘Not long after we arrived, the cook gave me a chocolate-coated ice cream bar. I’d never had an ice cream before and had no idea what to expect. “You got to bite hard,” he told me. I did and got a terrible shock when the cold hit my teeth. I’ll never forget that sensation.’
At sixty-two, Petro’s face still has traces of the puckish little boy he used to be on the Derna , but a depressed air hangs over him. His breathing is laboured and he limps as a result of a recent hip replacement. Pinned to the wall of his loungeroom is a large poster of Kapsali showing an inviting sugar-white beach and a turquoise sea. On the sideboard are old family photographs from Kythera, including one of his grandmother, a white lacy shawl on her head, surrounded by her family. More recent photos show Petro’s daughters and his grandchildren. He is alone at home at the moment as his present partner, a Filipina, has gone home to visit her family.
Petro lives on the Gold Coast in a small house overlooking a canal where ducks glide along the water. Paradise Waters is an ironic name for a soulless area of huge high-rises looming above the asphalt highway where cars speed between Southport and Surfers Paradise. ‘This is a terrible place,’ Petro shakes his large head. ‘So easy to get into mischief with nothing much to do. Drugs, gambling, prostitution.’ Pointing at the towers of apartment blocks he adds, ‘You never get to know your neighbours.’
Despite his grievances against George, he lives close by and often visits his older brother. ‘He should have done something for us young ones at least: educated us or sent us to learn a trade. I left sc
hool in Mackay after one year. That was the only year of schooling I had. We should have learned more than washing dishes. But what did we know in those days? We couldn’t speak English, didn’t know anything about this country, so we did whatever he said. I’ve never told him how I felt. What’s the use? It’s too late now. All my brother knew was work. He never had time for anything else. It was sixteen hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Anyway, George is dying,’ he says. ‘He’s got cancer, he’s just about finished. My sister Mary isn’t well either, and Betty has spent years in an institution for depression.’
After Vi and Petro had been in Mackay for seven years, their parents travelled to Australia for the first time. They came to help Betty, one of the sisters who had come out on the Derna.
‘My poor Betty,’ Vi laments. ‘She was such a lovely person. I loved talking to her. She was always ready to listen, so sensitive and proud. That’s a real big story, darling,’ she says. From her sigh, I can tell that it is distressing to discuss it.
Not long after arriving in Mackay, Betty married a Kytherian whose family owned banana plantations. After their first son was born, Vi, who was still at school, stayed with her for a few months to help. ‘They were living above the ripening room where huge machines hummed day and night and one day Betty said to me, “That noise is going to drive me crazy.” I went home with those words ringing in my ears.’
As Petro remembers it, Betty had post-natal depression after the first baby, but although she had been warned not to have any more children, she had two others. According to Vi, she had a nervous breakdown between the second and third child. ‘Maybe she hadn’t been happy from the beginning but was too proud to speak out,’ she says in a troubled voice.
‘When she got ill she couldn’t cope with the housework or the children. On one occasion, a fire started in the kitchen, another time the littlies climbed onto the roof and slid down. She couldn’t look after her things so all her beautiful clothes were ruined and the tablecloths from her glory box rotted. Finally she couldn’t stay at home any more and we had to put her into hospital.’
It was then that their parents arrived from Kythera to help take care of the children.
‘Mum and Dad cried when they saw poor Betty like that. They couldn’t believe it,’ Vi recalls. ‘She used to be so fastidious about herself, but she got terribly thin and neglected. Instead of getting better in hospital, she got worse. Ever since then she won’t go near a doctor or a hospital or take any medication. I think it was the shock treatment, maybe they gave her too much. One day I went to see her and she kept saying, “They ruined me. They ruined me.” I’ll never forget it. I don’t know what happened there, but it must have been terrible because she would never talk about it. Her illness has affected all of us. She doesn’t cope that well even now, but at least she manages to live in her own house.’
While their mother helped to look after Betty’s children, their father helped George in the café. ‘He couldn’t wait to get back to Kythera, that restaurant nearly killed the poor bastard.’ Petro shakes his large head. ‘He was wiping knives and forks all day and couldn’t straighten his arm in the end.’
Vi shows me a photo of their parents: the father a fine-looking grey-haired patriarch with a white moustache; his wife plump and motherly in a floral dress.
‘My mother wanted to stay here but my father said he was too old to start a new life,’ she says. ‘He missed his village, his farm and his neighbours. It was one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen in my life, because my mother wanted to stay with the family so much. It broke her heart to leave.’
At nineteen Vi accompanied her parents back to Kythera and stayed there for two years before returning to Mackay. She never saw them again. ‘I suppose if I stop to think about it, I didn’t really spend much time with my parents,’ she says. ‘But I’ve never analysed it or thought what if this or that had happened? If I did, maybe I’d start feeling sorry for myself, but I’m not that type of person. I loved them, they were wonderful people and did the best they could for us in every way. I can’t say I’ve missed out on anything in life. My family always took good care of me. If we celebrated something, we all went out together. My brother made sure I had the best of everything. I always had lovely clothes that I charged to his account. We had accounts everywhere.’ Suddenly she bursts out laughing. ‘I didn’t have a clue about ordinary shopping. When I got married and my husband gave me some money to do the shopping, I went out and bought two cases of soap! I didn’t realise that the money was supposed to last a fortnight!’
While Vi was in Kythera with her parents in 1957, Petro became ill. He had been complaining of aches and pains for a long time and could hardly walk. George sent him to a podiatrist who said that he was flat-footed and needed special shoes. But after Petro deteriorated so much that he could hardly move, they called a doctor who arranged for him to be flown to the Royal Brisbane Hospital immediately. He had rheumatic fever which had damaged his mitral valve.
Petro hobbles out to the kitchen and plies me with homemade butter cake and crisp spinach and feta triangles he has just taken out of the oven. Returning to the painful past, he says, ‘That eighteen months in hospital was the worst time in my whole life. They put me in a big ward with older men. Ward 1C it was. People were coming and going all the time. They gave me Aspros and shoved horrible penicillin injections into my backside every day with a thick needle. Those injections left a lump under the skin and hurt so much that I started crying as soon as I saw the nurse coming. I was so lonely. My family only came to see me once in all that time, and that was when the doctor told them they’d better come and say goodbye because I wouldn’t make it. I was so happy when they finally sent me home, but two weeks later I was back because I had a relapse.’
By 1960, he couldn’t stand the thought of going back to work in the restaurant.
‘I asked my brother, “Why don’t we take one day off a week?” But George said he couldn’t afford it. At that stage he was paying me ten shillings a week. Don’t forget that the Tourist Restaurant was a big business, it was full all the time. No wonder, because it was cheap and served good, hearty food. On Saturday nights the police had to hold back the crowds, because people queued up outside for a table. But it was no good to me. I was working for peanuts.’
Vi was still working as a cashier at the restaurant. A lively girl with masses of dark hair, a sparkle in her eyes that belied her demure demeanour, and high-spirited repartee for every occasion, she was a magnet for young men who would come to the restaurant to ask her out.
‘Come on, George,’ the aspiring beaux would plead. ‘Let Vi go to the dance, she won’t be out late.’ Vi would hold her breath but she knew what the answer would be. Her only outings were to Greek parties and dances that George approved of, where either he or one of her other brothers came to chaperone. She was never allowed to go on a date alone, and certainly not with anyone who wasn’t from Kythera.
Vi met George Comino while holidaying with her older sister Anna in Armidale.
‘It was lovely having a bit of freedom to go out with boys at last,’ she giggles. Although her husband was born in Australia, he was acceptable because his parents were Kytherians. After their marriage they lived in Armidale and that’s where she enrolled in a fashion design course. ‘I always regretted not staying on at school, but after I married I went to college, learned shorthand and finished up doing the design course I’d always wanted to do. But I didn’t finish it until after we moved to Sydney and my kids had started school.’
Suddenly she jumps up. ‘Come, I want to show you something.’ She leads me into her husband’s study where the walls are plastered with framed certificates, degrees and diplomas. Most are for his achievements in education. ‘George is an education consultant,’ she says. ‘He was a teacher when we met but I could see even then that he was brilliant.’ This is not just wifely pride, because I have heard George Comino mentioned admiringly in educational circles.
At Paradise Waters, the afternoon sun is dropping behind the high-rises and the waterway outside Petro’s house darkens. As we look once again at the poster of Kapsali, Petro sighs. ‘Life in Kythera was wonderful. If I’d stayed there I would have had an easier life. People there live forever!’
38
Unlike Petro, Bob Grunschlag never wished to be back in his native land. Even now, decades later, local thugs still chase him in his dreams, pitchforks raised to strike, until he wakes up with a strangled scream on his lips, his body drenched in sweat. But although he never considered going back, he felt frustrated and alienated when he arrived in Sydney.
‘The worst thing was not being able to communicate with anyone,’ Bob tells me. ‘I felt as if I’d suddenly become deaf, mute and invisible.’ Not having a trade or being able to speak English, he was worried about finding a job. He was mulling this over during the welcome party his cousin gave for him and his father shortly after they arrived. As the evening progressed, one of the guests motioned towards him and said, ‘I’ll give him a job in the dyehouse and pay him seven pounds a week.’ It was Frank Theemann, the textile manufacturer, who later launched the popular Osti label. ‘I’ll be away next week but I’ll let the foreman know he’s coming.’ A heavy load slipped off Bob’s shoulders.