Suburban Voices: Stories of Multicultural Manningham

The oral history project, Suburban Voices, was initiated and produced by Whitehorse Manningham Regional Library Corporation as a Federation Project.

The project celebrates the anniversary of a federated Australia by 'giving a voice' to the culturally diverse communities in the Manningham region in order that their stories be revealed and their contribution to community life be acknowledged.

Written by Lesley Alves from interviews with people of the City of Manningham.

Photographs by Tess Rice.

ISBN 0-9587367-0-7 First Published in 2001 by: Whitehorse Manningham Regional Library Corporation. 1040 Whitehorse Road, Box Hill, 3128. Postal Address: P.O. Box 65, Box Hill, 3128. PO Box 3083 NUNAWADING 3131 Phone: (03) 9896 4333 Fax: (03) 9896 4348 Email: web@wml.vic.gov.au

Copyright: All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the author, unless specifically permitted under the Australian Copyright Act 1968 as amended. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.

Designer: Luke Harris of Alias Design (Phone 0412 622 138 or 9809 4599) 1170 Toorak Road, Camberwell 3124

Back Cover: The Sentinel by Inge King at the Doncaster Road exit of the Eastern Freeway.

Introduction

Suburban Voices: Stories of Multicultural Manningham is a collection of personal stories told by people who have immigrated to Australia and have chosen to make their homes in the City of Manningham. This collection of stories is a contribution to the larger story of the municipality's conversion from orchard district to multicultural suburb. It is in turn part of the story of Melbourne's urban expansion in the second half of the twentieth century.

Suburban Voices is also a contribution to the story of the transformation of Australia from an insular outpost of the British Empire to a nation of remarkable cultural diversity. Immigration to Australia has come in successive waves. These waves of immigration and re-settlement have been echoed in Manningham, however here the waves have formed a pattern of their own.

Profile of Manningham Today

The City of Manningham, 12 kilometres north east of Melbourne, is an area of 114 square kilometres with natural boundaries on the Yarra River to the north and Koonung Creek to the south. Manningham embraces the suburbs of Bulleen, Doncaster, Doncaster East, Donvale, Templestowe, Lower Templestowe, Park Orchards, Warrandyte, Wonga Park and a small part of Ringwood North. The municipality is mainly urban residential in character with some commercial and retail areas, the largest being Doncaster Shoppingtown. There is little secondary industry, and very few orchards have survived from Manningham's former orchard industry.

Manningham has large areas of parkland and bush reserves, particularly along the Yarra River, which attract tourism to the municipality.

Census statistics over the last 25 years indicate that the residents of Manningham have relatively high incomes, high educational qualifications and a high rate of car ownership. More people in Manningham own their own homes than any other municipality in Melbourne. Manningham can therefore be described as an affluent middle class suburb.

The population of Manningham is approximately 112,000, of whom 34.5% were born overseas. In Australia immigrants have an overwhelming tendency to live in the metropolitan areas of the capital cities.

Over the whole of Melbourne the average overseas born is 32.7%. Manningham, with a slightly above average immigrant population, has a distinctive multicultural character that has evolved only in the last twenty years. Prior to 1981 the municipality had a lower rate of overseas born residents than that of the State generally, however even then it was becoming apparent that Manningham had been identified by people from several migrant groups as the place to settle. These immigrants came as part of the huge population and housing boom that has transformed Manningham's orchard covered hills into a landscape epitomising the Australian suburban dream.

Historical Profile of Manningham

The first people to inhabit the area now known as the City of Manningham were the Wurundjeri. After many thousands of years' occupancy of the land around the Yarra River valley, these people were rapidly displaced as Europeans arrived at the new settlement on Port Phillip Bay and occupied the land close to the infant town of Melbourne. The early European settlers in the Manningham area were, like the rest of the Port Phillip pioneers, English, Irish and Scottish, with English predominating. They cultivated the land for grains, vegetables and grapes, and they grazed cattle and sheep.

The area came to prominence in July 1851, when news was published that gold had been discovered at Anderson's Creek. The area became Victoria's first official goldfield. Although new rushes to the richer fields of central Victoria soon diminished the importance of the local diggings, Warrandyte remained a gold town into the twentieth century.

Zerbe Family Orchard, 1917

Gold brought fleeting fame. Manningham's sustained prosperity and reputation was gained as a fruit-growing district. Amongst those who established the district's orchards in the 1850s was a group of German speaking immigrants from Silesia. They gathered in the Doncaster area, which they called Waldau. With their Lutheran Church at its centre, this German speaking community maintained their culture well into the twentieth century. Descendants of the Waldau orchard families still live in the City of Manningham, however their distinctive identity as a German community has been lost.

At the end of World War II Manningham was still a farming and fruit-growing district, whose orchards supplied the Melbourne and overseas markets. Doncaster East boasted the largest coolstore in Victoria and there were several other public coolstores in the district. The then Shire of Doncaster and Templestowe was on the outer fringe of the metropolitan area, a pleasant place for Sunday picnics for those fortunate enough to own cars. In 1954 the population was only 6,814, however suburban development was creeping into some parts of the Shire. Within thirteen years the population had trebled and city status had been achieved. The City of Doncaster and Templestowe was proclaimed in February 1967. The same area, with the addition of Wonga Park and the excision of a small corner of Ringwood North, became the City of Manningham in December 1994.

Miners in the Warrandyte area, early 20th Century

The Making of Multicultural Manningham

Melburnians have long shown a strong preference for residing in the undulating leafy suburbs to the east and bayside suburbs to the south over the suburbs of the flat industrial west. Until very recently, to own a house on a quarter acre block in a pleasant suburb was the Australian dream, and "moving out", especially eastwards, was a sign of social and economic success. In the last fifty years Manningham's hills and valleys, with their vistas of river and bush, have attracted many suburban dwellers looking for that special place in which to make their home.

Australia's post war period from 1945-1971, known as the "long boom'', was a time of industrial expansion, economic prosperity, "baby boom'' and the greatest immigration program the continent has known. The consequent urban expansion in Melbourne could not fail to reach Manningham, however the nature of the countryside meant that urbanisation was not as early or as rapid as in places where there was flat land for industry and for housing to accommodate the workers. Manningham's hills were not suitable for factories, and besides, the area lacked a railway to transport workers and goods.

Aumann's Orchard in "Warrandyte

Nevertheless, in the 1950s housing subdivisions were beginning to replace the orchards in parts of the Shire of Doncaster and Templestowe, mainly those closest to transport routes. Bulleen, two miles from Heidelberg Railway Station, was a developing residential area. It also had the municipality's only industrial zone, which included two brick kilns and a textile factory. Other parts of the municipality gradually changed from rural and orchard district to residential, with the areas furthest from transport routes and closest to the river retaining their rural character the longest. According to the Victorian Muncipal Directory, in the mid 1960s Lower Templestowe, overlooking the Yarra River, had become a "select residential area'', while Warrandyte, on the banks of the River, and surrounded by bushland, remained a "residential township and tourist resort".

In the 1970s the municipality was a desirable place for "baby boomers'' moving out from Melbourne's middle ring suburbs to establish their own homes and families. They tended to be people with professional, technical, managerial or business careers. They could afford cars, two cars per family being quite common one for travel to work and another one for shopping and taking the children to school. The large Shoppingtown business and retail centre was built in Doncaster in 1969 to cater for the growing population. Along the Yarra flats at Bulleen three prestigious private schools established campuses and playing fields.

In those days the new arrivals in Manningham included a low proportion of immigrants, apart from those from Britain and Ireland. This is not surprising considering that newly arrived non-English speaking migrants had few options but to work in the poorer paid unskilled jobs, or to commence their own small business. They tended to live where housing was cheap, in the inner suburbs that were being vacated by Australians moving out, and in the industrial suburbs where they worked. New immigrants congregated in their own communities for mutual support, living close to family members or friends from the same village, where they could speak their own language and be understood.

"New immigrants congregated in their own communities for mutual support, living close to family members or friends from the same village, where they could speak their own language and be understood"

European migrants leaving their war-torn countries in the 1940s and 1950s brought few assets apart from a willingness to work. Having grown up during war time, often in a peasant society, they had missed out on education. Their prospects in Australia were to work hard in the readily available factory and construction jobs. Some people came intending to return home after making some money, but for most post-war migrants the expectation was to make a new life for themselves with better opportunities for their children. Many eventually prospered from their hard work and were able to move out to more salubrious suburbs. Again they tended to cluster in their own groups, as one family followed another out. These European migrants were seeing the results of their hard work in the next generation, as their better educated children went into professional occupations. This generation was moving out of the family home in the 1970s and 1980s, and many of them moved east to help swell the suburbs of Manningham. Perhaps for some children of immigrant families, this was an opportunity to break away from their migrant background and prove themselves successful Australians - assimilation it was called officially - until the adoption of the new policy of multiculturalism in the 1980s.

Well before this, however, Manningham had already begun to attract some immigrants. During the 1950s the Dutch were the second largest group of non-English speaking migrants in Australia. They differed from other migrant groups in that they spread out across the suburbs and countryside rather than gathering together. In Melbourne, the Dutch tended to favour the outer eastern suburbs. In 1954 the largest group of people from a non-English speaking country living in Manningham were the Dutch. There were also some smaller groups from other northern European countries.

The other noticeable group in Manningham, even in 1954, were the Italians, although still numbering fewer than one hundred. A number of Italian brickmakers and their families came to Bulleen to work in the brickworks in the 1950s. In 1973 Bulleen was chosen as the site for the Veneta Club, formed a few years earlier by people from the Veneta region of northern Italy. The construction of the large clubrooms and sports grounds at Bulleen became a major drawcard for Italians looking to move out. This was a place where they could gather, speak their own language, play bocce, and feel that they belonged in a new, prestigious suburb. The Club's opulent building is a symbol of Italian success in Australia.

The Lion of San Marco at the Veneto Club

By 1976 the Italians were by far the largest immigrant group in Manningham. They even formed a slightly higher concentration in Manningham than in Victoria generally. Since then Manningham has increased its share of Italian-born Australians. The Italians were followed closely by the Greeks, who in 1975 were asking for a Greek language school for their children. By 1981 Manningham's Greek population also exceeded the state average. In 1991 numbers of Greeks and Italians in Manningham peaked. Victoria's Greek and Italian-born population had peaked twenty years earlier, so as immigration from these two countries declined, the outward movement was in full swing.

Other groups moving out to Manningham in significant numbers from the 1970s include the Yugoslavs, (now counted under a number of independent nations since the break-up of Yugoslavia), the Lebanese and Egyptians. The first two groups have not achieved a particularly high concentration in Manningham. On the other hand, the Egyptian born, although only represented in the hundreds in Manningham, are present in proportions well above the rest of the State, reflecting the relatively high level of professional qualifications brought to Australia by Egyptians.

By the early 1970s immigration was having a noticeable impact on Manningham. In 1972, seventy-five people became "New Australians" at the Council's citizenship ceremonies. In June 1974 the first English classes for migrant mothers were run at the Doncaster Health Centre. The seventeen students in the class included Greek, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Lebanese and Turkish women. In 1975 the music listed in the festival program for the Centenary Celebrations of the City of Doncaster and Templestowe included items from the older German and Scottish communities, plus traditional Italian songs performed by the Veneta Club Choir. By 1976 there was a Dutch Retirement Club in Warrandyte and a Chinese Church of Christ in East Doncaster. However the municipality still had a relatively small immigrant population. It was 1981 before the proportion of overseas-born residents of Manningham equalled that of the State of Victoria, and it took a little longer to exceed the Melbourne average.

The most dramatic change in the immigrant population of Manningham from the mid to late 1970s has been the influx of Chinese from Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Chinese mainland and Taiwan. Their arrival in Australia was a consequence of the gradual dismantling of the White Australia Policy, which since Federation had actively discriminated against Asian immigration. During the 1950s and 1960s large numbers of young Chinese from Hong Kong and Malaysia were sent to Australia as students, on the understanding that they would return home on completion of their studies. A change in government policy in 1966, to allow non-Europeans possessing qualifications to fill vacant professional and technical jobs, meant that many of these students could remain or return to Australia later, and were eligible for citizenship after five years residence. In 1973 the government finally removed all explicit racial discrimination from its immigration policy.

Consequently, unlike the post-war European immigrants who took up the poorer paid jobs, the Chinese people admitted from the late 1960s were more likely to be highly educated and work in better paid professional and technical jobs. They could thus afford to live in affluent suburbs soon after their arrival in Australia. The developing suburbs of Manningham attracted a high proportion of Victoria's newly arrived Chinese. By contrast the Vietnamese, who began arriving as refugees in the mid 1970s, are relatively few in Manningham.

Chinese boardgames at the Chinese Senior Citizens Club of Manningham

Perhaps in the near future there will be a "moving out" of the Vietnamese from Richmond and Footscray. By 1991 the Chinese from Hong Kong, Malaysia and China outnumbered the Italians in Manningham, furthermore their numbers have continued to grow while the numbers of European-born Manningham residents have declined.

Another noticeable group that has grown considerably in Manningham since the mid 1980s are white South Africans, who have come to Australia with a high level of qualifications and skills. As English speakers they have found it easy to take up professional and managerial jobs, so they could afford to settle in Manningham soon after arrival. A much smaller group of newly arrived immigrants in Manningham are the Iranians, who, like the South Africans, tend to be highly educated professional people. Both groups have left their countries because of the political situations there at the time. Migrant families ofother origins too numerous to mention have also contributed to making multicultural Manningham what it is today.

Manningham's immigrant groups have established a number of organisations to cater for the cultural needs of their members. Many children and grandchildren of Greek, Chinese and Persian immigrants attend Saturday schools to learn the language and culture oftheir forbears. Italian, Greek and Chinese senior citizens have formed clubs that meet regularly in the Athenaeum Hall in Doncaster. New places of worship -St Haralambos Greek Orthodox Church in Templestowe and the mosque at the Umma Islamic Centre in Doncaster East -highlight the religious diversity brought to Manningham by its immigrants. Responding to the literary needs of the multicultural community, the Manningham branches of Whitehorse Manningham Regional Library Corporation have collections of books in Italian, Greek, and Chinese.

References

Australian Bureau of Statistics, Census of Population of Housing, 1954-1996.
Bertozzi, Daniel, "Veneto Social Club, 25th Anniversary'', 1998.
"City News: The Official Organ of the Doncaster and Templestowe Council", 1969-74.
"City of Doncaster and Templestowe Centenary 1875-1975, Finale Festival Program'', 1975.
City Profile, City of Manningham Website.
Galbally, F., Migrant Services and Programs, AGPS, 1978.
Green, Irvine & Beavis, Betty, Park Orchards: A Short History, 1983.
Jupp, James, The Australian People, Angus & Robertson, North Ryde, 1988.
Jupp, James, "Waves of Migration to Australia'', in Hardy, J., Stories of Australian Migration, NSW University Press, Kensington, 1988.
Leaney, Judith, Bulleen: A Short History, Doncaster and Templestowe Historical Society, 1991.
Migrants Melbourne: The Victorian Ministry of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs Guide to Multicultural Melbourne, 1976.
Pertzel, Barbara, & Walters, Fiona, A History of the City of Manningham, forthcoming.
Victorian Municipal Directory, 1956 -1992.
Walmersley, Jim, Rolley, Fran & Weinand, Herb, Atlas of the Australian People, 1996 Census, Victoria, Canberra, 1999.

The Stories

The stories that follow are told by twenty people from the groups identified. They illustrate the waves of immigrants that have come to the area during the twentieth century. Reflecting the socio-economic character of Manningham, they are business or professional people, attracted to the area by its aesthetic qualities, convenience and status, and by the fact that their friends were already there.

Each story is about the experiences of the individual, but reflects common aspects of the immigration and resettlement process, giving some wonderful insights into what it is to be an immigrant. They tell of making the decision to come to Australia, of culture shock on arrival, home-sickness and isolation from family, discrimination encountered and hardships suffered. The stories are also about the ways people have held on to their mother culture in the form of language, celebrations, cuisine and family attitudes, handing the old culture on to the next generation, and sharing their culture with others. They tell of people belonging to their migrant community while accepting and discovering aspects of Australian culture and identity. For most participants, the realisation that they now belong in Australia is something that occurred during a visit to their native land.

All have persevered, made the best of things and prospered sufficiently to be able to call Manningham "home"

There are stories from post-war European migrants who came to Australia with nothing. They did not speak English, they had little education, they were starting from scratch in a strange new country. They had the advantage that work was easy to come by, and they succeeded through hard work. There are also stories of hardship amongst those who left a reasonably good life in their homeland with high expectations for life in Australia. Even though they could speak English, they had to learn ''Australian''. Even though they were educated, their qualifications may not have been accepted at first, or the anticipated jobs were not available. Some people came from cultures little understood in Australia and had to overcome prejudice. All have persevered, made the best of things and prospered sufficiently to be able to call Manningham "home".

The personal stories of immigration and re-settlement in Manningham have been developed from edited transcripts of oral history interviews recorded with each contributor. The stories are told in the contributors' own spoken words, and reflect each person's way of speaking and unique personality. It is therefore recommended that the reader imagine each story-teller as speaker rather than writer.

David Barro, AO

"The Italian-Australians have done very well"

David Barro at his dining room table, with collectible glass objects from Italy

The Barro family was one of only three Italian families living on the Park Orchards Estate prior to World War II. David Barro's father had been there several years before David, his mother and siblings arrived in 1936. The Park Orchards Country Club Estate was subdivided in 1925, offering rural residential living with sporting facilities for residents. However the scheme failed and the owners planted pine trees and orchards instead. By the time David arrived the estate and its "Chalet" had become a resort for day-trippers.

David recalls life in the district before the war, and shortly after - the German orchard community of Doncaster, the rough country roads and Warrandyte "beach". He saw the beginnings of urban development at Park Orchards in the early 1950s. By then the Barro family had moved to nearby Ringwood, where in the post-war years they formed the nucleus of a small Italian community. David and others in this community were instrumental in establishing and building the Veneto Club.

I was born in a place called Treviso, which is approximately 25 kilometres north of Venice in Italy. My Dad and his brother were in transport. He had a mule and a few horses and picked up groceries from different towns and distributed as they went along. After the First World War things got worse, so Dad decided to migrate to Australia. He had a cousin out here. I was six when he left. I remember when he caught the train. It was very cold weather, because he came out on the eighth of December and my birthday was on the fourth. I remember the big lights on the train at night-time. Mum was crying and I went to sleep. I saw him again in February 1936, about nine years after.

During the Depression all these men here from the same country, they use to get letters from home once a month. One of the blokes said, "My wife says she wants some money from me". My Dad said, "My wife said, 'Either you come home or we come to Australia, one of the two. You've got to make up your mind what you're going to do."' The boys said, "Oh Lou, get her to Australia. Forger about Italy". So Dad writes straight away -he was a good writer my Dad -"Sell everything up, bring a lot of money with you, and come up". Mum didn't waste any time, she just sold everything up. And we took off. vie sent a telegram along the way but we didn't know whether he received it or nor. In the meantime I had a good time on the boat. When we got into the wharf nobody knew one another. Mum didn't know any of them. Bm amongst all those people -must have been about five, six hundred there - I can remember seeing somebody with a hat on, and I said, "It must be him". And it was Dad. Eventually we got down to the wharf and oh, talk! I remember one thing he said to my mum "Have you brought any money with you." he said:, "I've got some money",

Then someone Dad knew picks us up with a black car and he took us to a family he knew in Carlton and we stayed there three days. Me, two brothers and a sister and mum. When we came to Park Orchards, where we eventually stayed, we came with a truck. I remember coming up from Ringwood, up the hills, and said, "Gee some big hills here", because where we came from it's all level. I remember very well. There was a Chalet there. Next door to the Chalet was a house, and the manager said Dad could have that house.

Dad was there before that. When he arrived in Melbourne the first job he got was on the aqueduct up at Maroondah Dam. He used to do concrete formwork and shape it up to slope, but that finished about 1928. So he took a job on at Park Orchards. The Chalet used to be owned by Sharp and Taylor, timber merchants from Lorimer Street, South Melbourne. They planted pines - about four, five, six people were planting pines every day - and one third must have been orchards, and the rest was golf-links. They had about fifty people working there. Dad had extra work to do to, he had to feed the horses. He had about fifteen, twenty draught horses to pull the plough. I remember all these things. They put in golf-links -nine-holes -and Dad became a green keeper for these and shaped them all up. He'd been doing it for a long time before we came.

We used to work there every Sunday. I had to chop wood for the fire, for the hot water. In those days it was little beer, it was all cups of tea. All the billycans. I used to get the water from the tanks because there was no mains. And every Sunday about one thousand, two thousand people came to the Chalet. The buses came up and they had a picnic, had dances and some played golf But Park Orchards Chalet came to the stage where it was not economical to run, and they decided to sub-divide the property for housing -no more fruit. It must have been 1950.

The only bitumen road used to be Warrandyte Road -a little bit in the middle. Warrandyte to Park Orchards was a gravel road. When I pushed my pushbike I used to watch all the holes. And Doncaster used to be all orchard farms as well. Our beach used to be Warrandyte, where Warrandyte Bridge is. The Yarra was our swimming pool. Warrandyte didn't have many houses either. There was a hotel and a couple of shops. We used to go with the pushbike. Park Orchards was high. When you go to Warrandyte it's all downhill on the pushbike. Going back it was push up. I remember all these little things. At that time I used to work in the building trade, before and after the War. I used to do maintenance for some orchard people and in the coolstore in Doncaster. Some of these people used to call me to do little jobs for them. They were mostly German families. They had big homes and were very comfortable.

When the war finished, migration to Australia really started. Dad used to write to his brother who had ten or twelve in the family. His brother used to write back saying there was no work in Italy. Then he wrote a letter listing the names of his sons, and Dad brought four of the kids out here first -this was before 1949. To get them here we had to guarantee them a bit of work and accommodation. So Dad would do that. I used to work in housing, contracting, and I'd need people. We got a lot of people out here -some of the workers came from Bonegilla (Bonegilla Immigration Reception and Training Centre, near Albury NSW, accommodated new migrants from 1947 to 1971) too. Dad bought a property at 7 4 Warrandyte Road, Ringwood. It had a big house in the front and three or four bungalows at the back. So we had accommodation for about seven, eight people. More and more came until about 1960, 1962. About a year after they came there, I introduced them to the English, Scottish & Australian Bank (now ANZ) and they all bought a block of land in Ringwood and built their houses. They're still there, I would say, about twenty of them. Some of these people relied a lot on people like me or Dad for information and jobs and all these things. Dad was a pretty big family man and invited them to barbecues. So between our workers and their friends we might get a couple of hundred people at home on a Saturday night. So we became very close to them.

When the Veneto Club was formed in the early days a lot of people thought it was a good idea because they met one another very quickly. See people from the Veneto region who had never met before did, and it snowballed

That's why later on they talked about the Veneto Club. They came up to me and said, "You've been here for a long time, can you do something for us?" I'd been a soccer player for Ringwood, so I knew what a club meant. These young people, all their sport is the Italian thing -soccer. When Saturday and Sunday came, they had nowhere to go, and the only thing to put them together is a club. When the Veneto Club was formed in the early days a lot of people thought it was a good idea because they met one another very quickly. See people from the Veneto region who had never met before did, and it snowballed. And the women said, "Oh thanks, Mr Dave, because you've made this thing so we can meet now. My daughter met somebody at the Club and got married."

We got up to four or five hundred people very quickly, to be members of the Veneto Club. But prior to that there was a lot of work to be done. I told them, "You've got to form a committee, a proper one with a proper system, and the people have got to be loyal to the thing, the time factor is important -they don't want to waste their time".

The Barro family at Park Orchards, 1936

I said, "They've got to be prepared for that or else I will stop". I'd been president for eight years, but it took me nearly five years to get the Club going, to get the land and building at Bulleen. I said to them, "I want a site east of the Yarra, not north of the Yarn", because I lived this side. I said, "I want acres", So 1 put a motion through to make sure we got the land this side of the Yarra and not the other side. I looked long, long range - at that stage there were not many Italians in Doncaster or Bulleen. They came after the Club, a lot of them. Because they reckon it was a second home for then1, you know.

In 1968, after much negotiating with estate agents, the City of Doncaster and Templestowe, bankers and some of his own business contacts, David secured the sixteen acre site on the river flats at Bulleen for the Veneto Club. By this stage, David had built up a successful pre-mixed concrete, quarrying, construction materials and construction business. The firm did a lot of the concrete work on the new suburban subdivisions that began to replace the orchards of Doncaster and Templestowe in the 1960s. David is now Chairman of the group of family companies called the Barro Group.

l was one of the first to start readymix. We supplied and laid concrete. We did the slabs for all the earlier housing in Doncaster - even now still do. Between Ringwood and Doncaster, the Ringwood Plant would do about five or maybe seven slabs a day. Even this shopping centre, the big one [Doncaster Shoppingtown] - all my Pronto concrete there. I started it off.

At that corner of Doncaster Road and Williamson Road, the north corner, there used to be a little red brick building, about ten metres by ten metres. That's the little store. It was there for a long time. This Westfield Corporation bought it, all this block of land, and they wanted to build there. And someone gave me a hint that there's someone from Sydney who wanted to build a shopping centre there. So I rang the people up and I said, "You are building a shopping centre. I am a major contractor for this area. I am the biggest, and I am the best. I'll be coming to Sydney, can I see you in reference to this particular thing?'' "Oh yes, do it".

David at the Veneto Club under construction, 1973

So I remember, I went by taxi on the Sunday morning to meet the engineer Mr Foote, because I had to meet other people in Sydney on the Saturday night. I said to the taxi driver, "You stay there and I'll see if I'm at the right house ". So I went there. "Yes, come in, yes, yes". It must have been half past ten, eleven o'clock, and he had all the plans on the floor -sketches of the plans. So we talked and talked till nearly half past one. I said to him, "Look, when you come to Melbourne if you want to know anybody, see me, I can get you anybody. I can get you a plumber, electrician, anybody you want, I know everybody. I'm the white horse of Melbourne. Anything you want is there -but I've got to get the job too, see". He said, "I want a couple of houses to put my people in". "I'll get an agent for you, to get you a house there, don't worry''. So I gave him good confidence. And I'm nearly two hours there. We had a good conversation, we left amicably, and I gave him my card said, "I hear from you now, you've got to kick the ball back to me now". When I came out, the taxi was still there. Gee that cost me a fortune. We built that shopping centre pretty quickly, and we're still friends today with the Westfield Corporation.

Doncaster itself grew really when the shopping centre started. I think it took off then. I remember, because we supplied all the kerb and channel for subdivisions, for the developers in Doncaster, Blackburn. I was the main contractor in this area, east of Melbourne. I had the biggest and best team in kerb and channel, and any contractor would wait for me. I used to do a kilometre a day.

I was ambitious to do all the major jobs in Melbourne. Our Company today has about seven hundred people working. We've got about four hundred trucks on the road every day. And you can imagine all the rest of the quarries and sandpits and people all over the place. I've got about fifteen plants all over, some in Queensland, but mainly in Victoria. Ringwood is one of them. We specialise in concrete, pre-cast concrete, quarry products and building supplies. We do a lot of city work, big, high, skyscrapers, a lot of that. It's still a family business with my brother Marc. I've got my kids running around now, I'm not doing too much.

David's energy and ability to get things done in the Veneto Club attracted the attention of others in the Italian community, and he found himself in demand as a committee member and worker for many other groups, including Vaccari Homes and Assist Homes for elderly people. When his daughters attended the Mt Lilydale College, David was instrumental in the planning and construction of a new school. He has also been involved in industry groups, including Master Builders, Crushed Stone Association, the Institute of Quarrying, and the Australian Pre-mixed Concrete Association. For all these contributions to the community, David has received the honour of Office in the Order of Australia. He was also honoured with the title Commendatore by the Italian government.

Since I started my business, I worked for myself, for my company, about eighty percent, twenty percent I worked for the community. When I finished the Veneto Club I'd done eight years there. I started, carried on, completed, and it was in a good position with money in the bank. As soon as I got out, somebody rang me up and said, "We want you down at South Morang. We've got to start an elderly citizens home." I said "No, I've just come out from a big project, I'm not going into another now". "No you've got to come", he said. I said, "Get somebody else". They said, "We've got to get you because you'll be able to bring the others here." So "Should I do it? I'd better do it, yes, OK". So I went there and I was the Chairman and the President for them. I said "We've got to get the money somehow. We want more doers" -you know what I mean? The people reckoned I did a good job there for that. I worked another eight years there. Got it going strong everywhere. It was pretty big then. We had people help from everywhere. That fixed that up, and then somebody wanted to start this Assisi home in Rosanna, and they called me and others up. You've got to be everywhere. So that's why I say, I've got an input and I've got an output.

As one of the earlier migrants in Manningham, David has some interesting comments on the Italians in Australia. David moved to Doncaster in the mid 1970s, and does not intend to move away.

The Italian-Australians have done very well. My Mum used to like Australia more than anybody. I don't know why, but she did. All the Veneti up in the Club there, they are all ratepayers, every one of them. And I don't think they know what a recession is, I don't think they do. Of course they came out here, they were young, they've worked about thirty or forty years now and they just like work, and they succeed working. They've got everything they want, that's it, they've got everything. Now the new generation, in the Veneto Club, they all speak English, you know. It doesn't worry me, but somebody does worry, because in the next ten years it will be all English speaking there. Oh, I still speak Italian. My children, they've not bothered to learn Italian, only my daughter, Rhonda, can speak and write in Italian - perfect, yes. The other, no. It's much easier for them to speak English. It's not because you want to, or don't want to - it's easier, that's all, because everyone understands you. It's not because you want to be better or worse. That's the way it goes.

Now the ones who came after the war are all in their sixties and seventies. So they are all retired people now. And behind them are all the young ones who were born here. They are now twerty-five, thirty years of age and they are nearly all qualified, you know - girls and boys. The older ones think, "I've been a worker, I don't want my kids to dirty their hands like I did". I think it's the wrong approach. I go crook at them sometimes. I say, "It is no good to put a boy to be doctor if he's not made to be a doctor, no good if you want your kid to be a lawyer if he's not material for a lawyer". He might be better off to be a technical person, and he'll be a success in life.

We moved to Doncaster about 25 years ago because my house was too small, and to get closer to the Club I suppose. It's a good house here. Doncaster is the best place, you can't get better than this. You've got fresh air. You've got no pollution here. There's no factories here. The only thing here which might be bener, you know, they haven't got trains coming through. But we don't need that anyway. We've got buses. But this is the type of area it is. Sometimes I drive along and see some beautiful places in Doncaster. It amazes me the money they put into it. Because it's become like a small Toorak, you know. The houses cost money. But Doncaster itself, it's a privilege to live in the Doncaster area and around Templestowe. These places have prestigious homes. In years to come, people will look for those homes. My wife says to me, "We're nearly eighty now, we should get a little house, somewhere". I say, "Well I'm not thinking about it yet''.

Jan and Bep Verspay

Those were the days when the community really stuck together.

Jan and Bep Verspay in their sitting room, decorated with a collection of Dutch memorabilia.

Jan and Bep Verspay were both born in the southern part of the Netherlands, and grew up in villages five kilometres apart. Much of their childhood was disrupted by war, and afterwards they found their opportunities limited. Jan decided to come to Australia in 1954 and Bep followed two years later. When he arrived Jan found that there was only one landscape gardener listed ln the Melbourne telephone directory, so he took advantage of a business opportunity. Jan recalls his early years in the Netherlands:

It was a mainly farming community, where I was born in Velden. The farms were all between 10 and 20 hectares, some had maybe forty, fifty hectares - only half a dozen. My parents had a mixed farm, about a fifteen hectare property. They had a dozen cows and a few thousand chooks and grew all the food for the animals, and sold the products as an income. I can remember that we didn't have any electricity in chose days. My parents paid for the electricity poles to gee electricity on, and I think my mother was one of the first people in Velden who could cook on an electric stove. As a matter of fact, the same thing I've done here - buying the electricity poles from the Shire of Doncaster and Templestowe to get the electricity on to get electrical equipment going to build a house.

We had plenty of living quarters on the farm, but there was only room for one to stay on, so the other ones had to go somewhere. There were five children and on the farm usually it is the older person that got the right to take over the farm, In those days there was National Service operating, the first three children had to do National Service. I was number three. I had done a fair bit of studying - four years high school and then I studied two years landscaping and nursery work. Then I was drawn into the Royal Dutch Airforce. The National Service was three years. I did two years. Instead of doing the full three years, if I migrated I could leave immediately. In those days they had too many people in Holland. My brother had migrated to Australia, he said, "You could easily come over here, there's plenty of work". He told me if you do spend a year here, you earn enough money to go back if you want to. That was in 1954. Things were not that rosy, still recovering from the war. The Australian Government and the Dutch Government subsidised the migrants extensively. I never have been afraid to use my muscles or my hands, and, even though nearly seventy, I still like to do the work, although it's not so easy any more. By hard work, I think you can go a long distance. So I arrived in 1954 and spent two days in the Durch Hostel which was run by the Catholic Migrant Association.

Two days later, I got a job at Mary's Mount in Balwyn. There was a big mansion there, which was built by Mr Oliver Gilpin. He used to own all these Gilpin Stores all through the country, which were taken over by Coles and Dickens later on. This was a fabulous place -acres and acres of it. The Sacred Heart nuns had taken over at Mary's Mount. We did a lot of gardening there, but my landscaping skills were not coming to the fore. I applied for a job at Eric Hammond's in Box Hill, one of the big gardeners. He had a contract to develop the lawns and the gardens around Olympic Park and we worked there for months and months. These were quite big jobs. If you want to create something for a big firm then it's all right, but for a small person to begin, it is nicer to start with a little private garden. So I only worked there half a year. I put an ad in the paper about my gardening and landscaping experience, and I had dozens of phone calls. I finished up landscaping a garden in East Brighton. We were living at this stage in Box Hill in Middleborough Road, and to go to East Brighton I took my rake and shovel in the bus and in the tram and travelled all the way to Nepean Highway. It took me two hours to get there and two hours to get back, to work eight hours. I also took on a job in Glenferrie Road Toorak, where I worked two days a week. They paid cash and from that cash I could pay my board and live on it. From then on the business built up, and I employed a dozen people with the landscaping. The business was called Verspay Landscape Constructions, and I had it on my little red utility truck -a Ford Prefect - which I had bought in the meantime.

Jan had already commenced the business when Bep decided to leave the Netherlands and join him. She remembers the journey, and the things she brought with her to start a new life in Australia.

I was born Hubertha (Bep) van Well, in Arcen in the Province of Limburg - at home not in a hospital. My mother had a chemist shop, my father was a house painter and he did car respraying. When I was nine the war broke out and it was a very nasty experience. It had been a very strong winter, very cold. The river had set. On the morning of the tenth of May, at two o'clock in the night my mother said, "Children get up, it is war". And at the same time the trees blew up over the road. It was war until I was fourteen. I had gone to school before the war was ended, but because I missed a whole year of schooling, I didn't go back to high school. I got started working with my sister as a seamstress.

I met Jan and I didn't want to go to Australia, no way. But he said to me, "I come back in two years time". And so I thought, "Well two years time that's soon gone". But after two years time he had started his own business. My brother just had started his own business and I knew that you can't just say, 'TU stop and go back and start again". So I came here. Everybody thought it was a big step. I realised it when I walked to the ship in Rotterdam. I left my sisters there -because my mother didn't go to the boat -and I walked that long passage to the boat with my suitcase and everything and I thought, "What have you done?" But anyway I did it and on the boat I was by myself, but you soon find people there to talk with. They were all in the same boat!

"But I mean, what did we know about what was here? Nothing really. We learn in school that Australia has got convicts and it's got sheep. "

You are entitled to have a cubic metre of goods with you, and that goes in the hold. Jan had told me, "You don't need to bring money, you buy things." I worked at home, and we never got any money for working at home, but a bit of pocket money. You got your dowry. And so I got all my stuff that I would have had otherwise when I got married, I brought that. It was all stuff like crockery and I had carpets for the floor, and I had curtain material. My mother said, "You bring the bedroom suite, you might not be able to get it there". And I said "No you can get something there like that". So I brought a rubber mattress. I remember I was buying the towels and everything, and my mother said, "Go and get these white tea towels, you never know, when you get a child they might not have nappies". I've still got them new, lying in the cupboard. But I mean, what did we know about what was here? Nothing really. We learn in school that Australia has got convicts and it's got sheep. I had the whole household with me, so I had two cubics instead of one. I had even my wedding dress with me. I didn't dare to look at it. On the night before I got married somebody said, "Did you try it on?" I said "No, because if it doesn't fit, I can't do anything about it, I have to get into it tomorrow. I did fit into it anyway.

I came in November 1956 and we got married in May 1957. I hadn't seen Jan for two years, and I wanted to make sure. I had made arrangements if it wouldn't work out I could go to England. I wouldn't have gone back to Holland straight away. I wouldn't have admitted that it was a failure. So we waited to see if everything was all right. And in the meantime we started building. We moved in here when our first child was five months old. She was born in Box Hill Hospital.

Jan takes up the story of buying land in east Doncaster and building the house.

It was nice going for a picnic in the early days. You had your car. In Holland you hadn't been driving a car but here you had your ute, so you'd go for a picnic. You'd see these estate agents sitting along the road with a beach umbrella selling the land. And in no time you're in the car with them to show you where the land is. So we did buy land in East Burwood first -but then on another Sunday travelling we came across East Doncaster. T.M. Burke, the Estate agent, had a big marquee on top of where Beverley Hills Primary School is, and they were selling land there. So there were a couple of nice blocks of land here and so I paid a deposit on them. And consequently I had three blocks ofland paying off, which was a little bit above my means and I had to let go the one in Burwood. We had bought this land here in Turnstone Street with unmade roads, no electricity, no water, but it was very cheap in those days. The agent, said, "Well there's going to be a Catholic school in Beverley Street and Leeds Street, so the children can walk to school". So we decided to purchase this property and we started building before we were married, and it took us two and a half years before we could move in.

It was a twelve and a half square house which was, in those days, a very big house. Most houses were ten, eleven, but we built twelve and a half and that included the garage. But then we built on to it, we built another twenty squares on, using mainly the timber out of the coolstore in Doncaster Road. When we built the house here and as far as you looked you couldn't see a house around the place. The roads were unmade.

Bep adds:

Yes but the other block in Burwood, the road was not made and it was all letterboxes standing all around, and all bungalows at the back. I said to Jan "I don't want to live here". I suppose it was all my Dutch way still, I could not see myself living here. I was not acclimatised enough to Australia. So I said, "Let's build the house and don't build a bungalow, because ifwe build a bungalow we will be sitting in it for a long time". What they used to call a bungalow was a sort of a sleep-out made with the fibrocement sheeting at the back of the house. A temporary dwelling, and they made that later into a garage or something. And there were lots and lots of people -nearly all ofthem migrants -started off like that, you know, before they could afford to have the house.

Jan begins work on their home in East Doncaster

Then we moved in here, but we had no water, no electricity, nothing. The Water had promised they

would put the water on, the electricity was going to be here and we had a big hole in front of the kitchen door where the septic tank was going to come. I still remember that day when I came here when we had no water. The neighbours were a long way there in the orchard. They said, "You can have water from us". Jan went with a forty-four gallon drum at the back of his ute. He got here and he wanted to slide the tin off and it tipped. Oh! It was everything in that hole. Oh gosh it was a mess. But it was only a couple of weeks and then everything turned out. But with a baby from five months you have to have water and all that sort of thing. The house was not finished yet the kitchen was finished and one bedroom. And for the rest we did it all while we were living here. Luckily Jan's parents came out in 1960, otherwise it would have taken longer.

The Verspays' newly built house in East Doncaster, 1960

The new suburb of East Doncaster was a close-knit community as people worked to establish urban and community facilities. Jan remembers that they immediately became involved in community matters.

We used to be a member of the East Doncaster Progress Association, which had several meetings when something was required. For instance, a new telephone booth had to be installed in Blackburn Road. Mind you Blackburn Road and Doncaster Road were not roads like they are now. Turnstone Street on a wet day, you couldn't drive from Devon Drive to Blackburn Road uphill, because there were deep ruts sometimes two foot deep, and all clay. I remember our parish priest coming down one day and he wanted to go up the hill, and he got stuck, and in his gumboots he came back and said, "Could you get us out?" So we pulled him out again.

In the meantime the parish of St Peter's and Paul's had started off and because our children were going to go to school there, we got much involved there in developing the place to start off. I remember we had a big bonfire burning up the pine trees that had been chopped down -the branches anyway. We had a big Guy Fawkes night. I was involved in the first committee of the parents' auxiliary. The gardens around St Peter's and Paul's, we laid out. We only charged for the materials, the work was donated. The same happened developing the tennis court in Hamilton Crescent. All the rock garden and the trees planted around it, we have done all that. The tennis club has paid for the materials, that's all I asked for. Those were the days when the community really stuck together, we were all in the same boat and trying to progress. We had several barbecue parties and we had five piece bands playing dance music under the clothes line, to raise money for whatever organisation was going.

Bep continues:

Well the community was very close in those days. We were involved with the church. You had to give to raise the money to start the church and the school. So in Blackburn they put a big marquee up and that's where we had a dinner. And you had to pledge so much money you could give evety year. That was the first time I really saw all the people, I never realised how many were living there already. They built the two rooms for the school, and on the Saturday they used to shift all the seats -the men did that, they had a roster -because on Sunday there was mass. Then on Sunday night they shifted them back around again for the schoolroom. They put a big screen in front ofthe altar and there were two classrooms. Our daughter was the first one who started the full cycle in the school. She started from preps through to grade six. When our sons were in school there were over nine hundred children in that school, and they had all these portable classrooms. We always were involved in the fete too. We had to mal<:e things for it and had a cake stall. We made Dutch donuts in a copper and a fire and we were baking all day long. I don't know how many we sold. Oh yes, we raised a lot of money all the time. I was, for sixteen years, at the tuck shop from one to the other -St Peter and Paul's. The girls were at Sion in Box Hill and one son was already at Marcellin. So I had three schools. And then you had to go to the parents and the mothers club and all that sort of thing. As long as they've been at school I've been involved all the time. Now we're not involved any more, really, because the younger generation has taken over, and the buildings are built. We've got a church.

Jan talks about his landscaping work in Doncaster and other suburbs, noting the changes in fashion he has seen over the years.

I came here with all diplomas and certificates as a landscape gardener. Also you had to be a qualified businessman in Holland before starting a business, because it wouldn't be much good for the customer if you started a garden and then you went broke. So the Government insisted that you had a certain amount of cash behind you. And because I didn't have this cash behind me, this was probably one of the reasons to try my luck somewhere else. During the studies in Holland you had to do all sorts of landscaping. It is not a matter of digging up a garden and planting a few trees or plants, or lawn or whatever. You should be able to build a retaining wall. If a fence has got to be fixed you should be able to be a bit of a carpenter. A good landscape gardener is certainly a jack of all trades, because he comes across anything. Landscaping is imitating the landscape. So you must have a view of what a landscape looks like, or what you can create.

When I came the native plants were not so much in fashion, but they have taken over a lot in the years. Around about the sixties I would say, it was in full swing. But people are going more for the English type of gardens again. The native gardens you get very quick results. However, after seven or eight years the garden looks pretty tatty, and you start all over again. We have planted native trees, but not to a great extent. We really specialised in mossy rock -truckloads and truckloads and truckloads of it we used. Because of the slope of the land in Doncaster area, and practically everywhere in Melbourne, the mossy rock -the volcanic rock was very much in fashion.

The Verspays in front of their post and rail fence

Also, a lot of Japanese gardens were done by us, using pebbles. On my travels coming from Europe in the Canary Islands I had seen some big slabs of concrete - as big as a kitchen table - and we made some round concrete slabs in the front garden and put polythene and pebbles down and planted some cactus and things like that in between. We did quite a few of these gardens. Fashions come and fashions go. Later on the railway sleepers came in and a lot of tan bark was being used. Now, the mulching has been much in use, which is a very good idea.

Since we've moved to Doncaster, we did a quite a few gardens in Doncaster, mainly domestic. We did some factories. But then I got involved with an architect and he operated in Toorak and Caulfield area. So, in some streets we laid out half a dozen gardens. The architect should work in with the landscape gardener. A good landscape gardener is called in before the architect is called in to design the house. So he looks at the empty block and suggests, "Well you could make such and such a garden if you built the house that and that way".

I was looking to build a house with a nice garden around it, and so I bought two blocks of land next to one another, and the house was built on the two blocks.

I got my nice garden all right, but nowadays if I want to change my nice garden, I find it difficult to do that, without getting in trouble with the authorities. If I want to cut a tree down, I have to think twice. You have to get permits and so on. As a matter of fact, with the development going around here there are units everywhere. Yes, I'm all for progress. If you sit still you don't get anywhere, you've got to move along, and some houses are due to be replaced. But with the new developments, I think it's going a little bit too fast. And as a matter of fact, units will be developed next to me on the north side and they're cutting down all the vegetation and making use of my vegetation as greenery and I can't touch it anymore. These things have come in, I suppose changing times, but maybe going a bit too far. But I enjoy living here and, we hope to enjoy to living here for many years still.

The Verspays were one of the first Dutch families to settle in East Doncaster. Several others soon followed. Jan thinks that one of the reasons that Dutch people chose the eastern suburbs was the fact that the Dutch hostel was in Kew. Although Jan and Bep have kept in touch with the Dutch friends they made in Australia, they also made other friends while building their new suburb. They have maintained parts of their Dutch culture, particularly when it comes to food, but they have also adapted to the Australian way of life. Bep gives some examples:

In Holland you say, "You choose you own friends, but your family you got". So when we came here, we had to make new friends in the beginning and they're all very close still. We haven't got any family here, just Jan's brother.

We never celebrated St Nicholas here. The first time we went overseas, and it was St Nicholas Day, our daughter was three years old, and she had seen St Nicholas come by boat. My brother-in-law was St Nicholas, and he made a lot of fuss over the children. We came back here and when it was around that time again I said to the children, "Well here's Father Christmas, St Nicholas doesn't live here". I didn't want to celebrate the two of them. They are very close together and on top of that I wanted to become in the way like it was here. So, we go with the bus to Box Hill and I stepped out of the bus and who stands there - St Nicholas. Well, what did I have to say? I didn't know, I can't remember. But we didn't celebrate it anymore. We always celebrate Christmas. We have our turkey and ham. But we still go to midnight mass and we have breakfast after that - what we used to do at home.

People when they came here in the beginning and they put the Vegemite on the table, they thought straight away that it was applestroop because it looked the same. So, they spread it good and thick on the sandwich and bit into it and then they found out that it is not the same, because applestroop is sweet, it is made from apples. And it is nicest when you put a bit of real butter -not margarine, butter -and a fresh piece of rye bread - that's the nicest. We have our roast dinner, which we never did at home. Usually, we have once a week a roast dinner -lamb. I don't know even if they have tasted lamb in Holland. Even if it tastes good, they would still say it doesn't taste good. I don't know why. But we still eat a lot of Dutch things.

Bep reflects on what might have been, had they stayed in Holland.

At the moment in Holland, they really, in my eyes, live beyond their means, I'm sure. In 1960 to 1970 it was so good in Holland. When we were visiting there in 1982, oh gosh, everything was full up there. The kids got everything that they wanted, and they were spoilt like anything. The morals were very bad. Then I thought, "Good, we can go back and rear our children in Australia''. Holland was good in the sense of having everything, but the morals were very, very bad there, in those days. It has got much better now. They still have everything there. You see rows and rows of people on the bikes, all our age and younger, all not working. They all get from the Government a pension -rich and poor. We can't have a pension here because we've got the flats next door, but there you can have as much as you want and you still get from the Government. So they all finish work at about fifty-five and then they enjoy their life. When we were there the first time, yes, if he had got a job there, I would have liked to stay there. Then the children were small enough to stay there, but not anymore. Now we've got children here and grandchildren, no we wouldn't go back.

Lula Black

"Now I feel Australian with the Australians and Greek with the Greeks"

Lula Black at Templestowe Cellars, which has been in her family for over 30 years.

Although she was born in Melbourne, Lula Black was brought up in the traditions of her Greek parents. Her family ran a series of businesses in the inner suburbs, a fish shop, greengrocery, delicatessen. Lula's story gives some insights into what it is to be a Greek Australian.

My mother was from Ithaca and my father was from Lefkas. They're both islands of the Heptanese in Greece. My father came in 1924 and my mother came in 1933. My maternal grandfather came here in 1889 with his brother John. They went to the goldfields in Maldon. I don't think they made a lot of money, probably made enough money to go back. In 1895 he returned to Greece and his brother went on to America. In 1900 he left Greece for America to join his brother in Gloucester, New England. But he didn't really like it there, so he went back to Greece and my mother was born in 1906. He made another brief trip to Australia after that with his nephew Peter and after about twelve months returned to Greece. Another two sons and a daughter later, he came back to Australia in 1912 with his eldest son John and they went to Kalgoorlie. The whole town there was virtually Greek migrants who owned most of the businesses, they worked in the mines.

My grandfather and uncle then headed for Melbourne, where they had relatives. I think my Uncle John stayed for a while in Port Pirie and my grandfather went on to Melbourne and started up a fruit barrow. Just before the First World War he went back to Greece, and he stayed there till he died. But in the meantime he'd left his son behind with relatives. Looking back, it seems that my grandfather was like our illustrious ancestor Odysseus. Like Odysseus he'd left his wife in Ithaca to look after the family, while he went adventuring around the world.

Uncle John brought my mother over. When I went to Ithaca in 1976, I walked where she walked in the village, and I thought of a young girl coming from a little village, coming to a place on the other side of the world, where they said that the kangaroos used to eat you. I thought that was pretty brave, even though her brother was here. I guess she'd heard stories of Australia from her father as well.

My father came in 1924. He'd been a cavalry man in the Asia Minor War in the early twenties. I think his mother died in 1923 and his brother was here. Actually, my father was one of about twelve children, but all the other children had died in infancy, so he came to his elder brother here in Australia, and he settled in Melbourne. He had a fish shop initially, and then he went into fruit, which seemed to be a family kind of thing, because Uncle John was in fruit.

My parents were married in 1934 and they lived in East Brunswick. After I was born they went to Camperdown to join one of my mother's cousins, and they ran a cafe called Laura Cafe, but my mother was homesick. She was pregnant with my brother, most of her women relatives were back in Melbourne, so they came back to Melbourne and my brother was born. She was homesick for Melbourne. Actually, that's a funny thing because my father told me that my mother never really wanted to go back to Greece, she really liked it here, and so did my father. My dad really liked it here. He was a keen Australian Rules follower you know.

Even though he didn't want to go back to Greece to live, he wanted us to experience the culture. He really liked going to the Greek clubs and he really encouraged us to learn Greek. We weren't allowed to speak English in the house. We did as soon as we got out the front door -he knew that. But I'm really glad that he did that because our Greek was much better because ofthat. We felt secure, particularly with the Greek clubs -we used to go to dances, picnics, Christmas trees, all this kind of thing. We went to Greek school -two nights a week it was. Dad used to take us into the city. It was good because we met the other Greek kids, and we made lots of friends. It was our first introduction to non-Ithacan Greeks, because up to then we'd just associated with Ithacans.

We had the fish shop and then he got the fruit shop in North Fitzroy, and my mother was working there as well. I remember we were small children there during the War. When my mother died in 1943, Dad still used to have to go to the market. Actually he was one of the first people who got a telephone, because he used to have to leave us home by ourselves while he went to the market. When he married again he got another fruit shop in North Carlton. I always had to help in the fruit shop. A couple of times the Truant Officer came because I used to skip school and work in the shop on Fridays. It was just the thing that you did. I think that most of the Greek kids of my generation used to help their parents in their shops, cafes or whatever. I did want to be a teacher, but I had to leave school at third form to help in the shop.

We had all the Greek traditions, like the Greek food and the Greek dancing and those kinds of things. I remember when my mother was still alive she'd put us to bed like on Easter Saturday and then wake us up at eleven o'clock to take us to church. We used to go to Evangelismos in East Melbourne. I remember the red Easter eggs and the firecrackers. Ofcourse the next day would be lots of eating and Greek sweets, and good fun.

I think the Greeks in Australia went into a kind of a time warp, because they were freer in Greece at that stage than we were here. Our parents had come from that kind of culture and they thought that that's how it remained, but it didn't.

My cousin had a fruit shop in North Balwyn and I had christened her daughter, so I was a godparent to her daughter, and I used to go up quite often. There was a boy working there, he was from Ithaca too, and she used to put us together and the natural thing occurred. But he formally asked me for my hand in marriage through her. She came to my dad and, you know, we went through all that. The thing was that if I was to say yes, she was to wash the footpath. So when he came for work that morning if the footpath was washed the answer was yes. And then afterwards you go through the betrothal and the engagement and the wedding, so it was pretty formalised. My uncle took me up to Balwyn and we sat around. My father was there and the bridegroom was there and my cousins. My father formally asked him whether he wanted a dowry and he said he didn't want a dowry, he just wanted me. So the deal was done. And then when we got engaged all his relatives would come along and give me jewellery. So, I got heaps of jewellery, and lots of flowers. They'd be queued up with all the floral arrangements. Yes, it was good.

When I was younger I got the impression that the Australians used to think I was Greek. The Greeks, when we went to Greece, used to think we were Australians. So we didn't kind of fit in -we fitted in the middle somewhere. But all the children born here felt the same. Now I feel Australian with the Australians and Greek with the Greeks. I feel good, yes. I think after 1972, when Whitlam came in, that did a great lot for the confidence of the migrants here. They felt that they really belonged then. It's not assimilation, it's integration. You know, it's sort of like the difference between soup and stew. In soup everything is sort of mixed up together, but in stew like you'd get a potato and you'd get a parsnip and you'd get a little bit of meat.

My husband felt really Australian too. We went to Greece in 1976 and we stayed eleven and a half weeks. He enjoyed it but he was really glad to get back. He practically kissed the ground when we came back.

My son and I, we were OK, we were on holiday, but because he’d been born there, he could see the difference between the Greek way of life and the Australian way of life. When we got on the plane – when he saw the kangaroo on the Qantas, and when he got in he got a warm can of Fosters, even though it was warm, just because it was Australian, he was really glad to get back. My dad went back when he was seventy-eight, for the first time. They used to ask my dad in Greece, “Are you going to come and live in Greece?” He said “No, because I’ve got roots in Australia and every year my roots get thicker”.

Family group, Carlton. Lula is the baby on her aunt's knee, 1936

We used to send the children to Greek school. They used to hate it. All the next generation kids used to hate it because it took them away from their friends and their play and so forth. But they did go for about three years. My youngest son sort of got his Greek back again. My eldest son probably still understands Greek, because my mother-in-law used to live with us. I think they kept up their Greek, but the youngest son can understand and speak better than the oldest one. My eldest son married an Australian a lovely Australian girl. My husband and my mother-in-law were so happy with her. Some people would say, "Is your eldest son married?" And my husband said, "Yes. He's married a Greek girl? No - Oh!" And my husband would really go mad, he'd say "I'd rather have Cindy'' (my daughter-in-law) "than a thousand Greek girls", because she's a lovely girl.

I’m a member of the Ithacan Philanthropic Society and the Ithacan Historical Society. I’m a member of the Editorial Committee of the Ithacans. The Historical Society is Melbourne-wide, although we have a lot of Ithacans living in Manningham. I think the fact that once one Ithacan comes in, they all follow.

Lula and her late husband Peter had their own fruit shop in Hampton when they received the call to Templestowe in 1968. Lula’s family were the forerunners of the wave of post-war Greek immigrants moving out to Manningham. Lula has been active in the local business community, and was one of the founders of the Templestowe Village Festival. For her community involvement, Lula received a Paul Harris Award from the Templestowe Rotary Club.

My brother Spiro had been in food all his life, and he really wanted to own a liquor store. So when he heard that there was the shop in Templestowe for sale he came up and had a look at it and he liked it, so they came and got it. At that time it was a licensed grocery, so it had groceries, it had briquettes, and they use to have bulk peanut butter and bulk this and bulk that. It had everything. They had the truck from the fruit shop so they used to deliver the briquettes. But gradually the groceries were reduced and we ended up with a complete liquor store. Templestowe Village was just a little collection of shops. The liquor store was next to the original general store, which was the focus of the whole neighbourhood, or the whole Templestowe area. Across the road was the blacksmith and he used to come over and have a cup of tea with Spiro. It was really very friendly. It was like a little village. And they were really welcomed, yes. There weren’t very many Greeks in Templestowe then. There were still pear orchards and farms.

Lula’s father, Nicholas Kavadeas and late husband, Peter (Mavrokefalos) Black, at Templestowe Cellars, 1970s

In the store I think they had about a dozen different wines, they had a few flagons and they sold beer. My brother was always really keen on wine. We were still at Hampton at the time and my brother said to me, “Sell the shop and come up here”. So we sold the shop and we went there about 1968 or 1969. We had no idea of wines or spirits or anything. We were there for about three weeks and my brother was off to the vineyards in South Australia. Over the next few years he would go off to the vineyard areas and look at wines and bring them back. That’s how we developed the wine selection at Templestowe Cellars. We did at one stage put in some Greek wines, but nobody really wanted them, they preferred the Australian wines. Australian wines are lovely, they're really good. There's very few that ask for Greek wines. The ethnic population likes Australian wines. We get Asian people coming in and they're looking for the Australian wines and you get Greeks coming in and they really like the Australian wines.

Templestowe Village has grown. We've had a number of new shops, particularly with the last local enhancement scheme. It's really made the area into a true little village. With all the new units, townhouses that have been built, you see people walking up to have a coffee. They sit outside at the tables. My son and I quite often go up about half past nine or ten o'clock in the evening for coffee. We have a coffee and we walk around the centre, and see people and say, "Hello, how are you?" It's not like Southbank, it's more like a European village, where you go up to the square and you have a drink or a cup of coffee and you have a little chat and then you go home. They have very small houses in Europe, and they spend most of their time at the taverna or the coffee shop. It's very social, it's very nice.

I'm heavily involved in a lot of the committees to do with Templestowe -the Templestowe Strategy Plan and the Templestowe Local Enhancements Scheme. I was a foundation member of the steering committee that was set up to oversee the redevelopment of the Templestowe Primary School and the Memorial Hall. So it was really nice to see that come to fruition, when the Council bought the school property and turned it into the wonderful thing it is today. It's just terrific. It brings lots of young people to the centre with the netball complex and so forth.

I have been involved in the Traders' Association for more years than I can remember. It's nice to have an active traders' association. I've been Secretary for the past fifteen years, and the President, Gus Morello, and I have been acting as shopping centre co-ordinators for the Village for the past five or six years. That involves promoting the village. So we do that by organising flyers and magazines and things like that. Also we're involved with the Templestowe Festival, which started about eight years ago, and was the traders' initiative. But in the meantime we got community members and we got a lot ofthe service clubs -Rotary and Kiwanis -and people like that. It's wonderful. It's good promotion for the Village but also it brings the community together. At the Festival we have free on-stage entertainment. One year we had "Con the Fruiterer"; another year we had the Chinese Lion Dancers. We've had ethnic dancing, we've had Greek dancing, we've had line dancing, which is Australian -or American, I guess. Manningham Council gives us a grant. They can see how terrific it is for Templestowe, and Manningham.

I remember when I was a child and we still had the fruit shop in Nicholson Street, Dad used to come up here for peaches. Mr Smith was the orchardist. When we used to come up here we used to think it was the country, it was just all orchards and farms and cows, all the way up Templestowe Road. And now it's all changed, it's all housing. But it's really lovely having the parkland around. That's a definite bonus. You can understand people wanting to live here. Every time we come home, and I look at Westerfolds Park I say, "Isn't Templestowe a wonderful place to live?" I've been saying that for years and years. My father really liked it too. He came from East Brunswick, and he used to go down occasionally because his dentist was still there, and then when he came back he used to say, "Living in Templestowe will add ten years to my life". I think he just liked the open spaces and the trees, because where we used to live in Carlton and Brunswick there was the lanes and the bricks and not many trees. I don't think I could live anywhere else. I mean Templestowe has spoilt me for anywhere else.

The Wine Waiters Race was Spiro's idea, when we were thinking of something to have at the festival. So, bearing in mind the Wine Waiters Race that they used to have at the Lygon Street Festa, we thought that we'd have the Templestowe Cellars Wine Waiters Race. So, we organised it so that we could have the Templestowe Cellars Wine Waiters Cup, and a magnum of champagne for the winner, and maybe a bottle of wine for the others. The first year we had about four contestants. We had three glasses, filled with wine, then you run a certain distance and come back. Then the wine's measured and whoever's got the most wine wins. The guy who won the first time put his other hand on top of the glasses, so he didn't lose any wine. So, the next year we had to change the rules so that you can't touch the tray with any other part of your body. So, it's quite fair now. They're all waiters from the restaurants around the area. This year it was won by Victor from Eastern Court. I think that's the third year they've won it. La Piazza have won it two years. The customers really like it, the people at the festival really like it and they make way for them, and they cheer them on. We get a lot of broken glasses and a lot of spilt wine, but it's good fun.

Angeliki Puckey

"... it's like you're building an identify, a new identity, a new existence ... "

Angeliki Puckey in her lounge room in Templestowe.

Angeliki Puckey was born in southern Cyprus, into a farming family. After leaving school Angeliki studied and worked in England for a few years. On returning to Cyprus, she joined the police force, where she met George, an Australian member of the United Nations Peace Keeping Force, who was serving on the island during a time of trouble between the Greek and Turkish communities. Romance blossomed, and in 1968 Angeliki migrated to Australia to marry George. The couple moved to Templestowe with their two daughters in 1970. Angeliki has been involved in the founding of a Greek Orthodox Church in Box Hill and a Greek Australian Choir in Northcote. In the former City of Doncaster and Templestowe she was a volunteer interpreter and helped set up Meals on Wheels.

I was born in a little village called Pakhna in the south part of Cyprus. Actually, we call it the wine area villages. I come from a family of six. We lived up there until I was nine years old and then I moved into the city because we wanted to have higher education, and we couldn't have that at the village. My dad was a musician but music, like nowadays, wasn't enough to have a good income to support the family. Mum and Dad had inherited a lot of land, vines mainly, and they had to work for a good return to support their big family. Up there we had grandmother, grandfathers, all the aunties, and my father was a first child of his family. And we - myself and my brothers and sisters - were the first grandchildren. So we were spoilt in that way, but well looked after. I remember lot of things we experienced with Grandma and Grandpa.

I thought I would take up law, but my parents couldn't afford to send me overseas all these years to do law. So I went for only two years in England to study at the Regent Polytechnic. After that, I got a job in England and I stayed there for a while. But Mum and Dad then wanted me to come home. When I returned home there was political uprising in Cyprus again, and the government decided to enrol ladies in the military and police force. When I finished high school one of my dreams was to become an air hostess or a policewoman. So, I became a police officer, and I worked with the prosecution department.

Because of the troubles we had around the island we had to keep the morale of the people high. A lot of killing was taking place on both sides, Turks and the Greeks. The worst experience I had during my service there at the north-west of Cyprus an area they called Tilliria or Paphos, nineteen sixty-four -the Turks bombed the island with napalm bombs. For a whole week they were bombing the place and they were burning the people, so we had to attend the burned and the sick and the families. It was very upsetting. And we knew how our little island was in difficult times. But sometimes you wonder what for. Actually, we were striving for co-existence. There were elements that were stopping that to be achieved. And the whole people suffered.

I used to work at Paphos and then I moved into Limassol where my family was. And there I met George, a policeman with the United Nations Peace Force. He was a detective from Victoria Police. At the time he was working as a peacekeeper. And when visiting the officer whose office was next to me he saw me. And he fell in love with me. So a nice romance, a beautiful romance developed. We got engaged in Cyprus. We couldn't get married because he had to maintain a neutral position. I was on the side of the Greeks. They shouldn't get involved with Greeks or Turks. They had to be neutral, that was their role.

My mum, she almost died when I told her, but she'd met George. He started being a friend of the family. And they were impressed. He was a very well-mannered gentleman, very kind and my parents liked him and my eldest brother liked him. My brother was very protective of me and he was getting suspicious that something might develop. When I released the news to my mum, she says, "Oh! that's why he has been coming here all the time. He knew what he wanted." And she says, "No way. You were overseas. We brought you back, we don't want you to go again. I haven't got a daughter to go overseas." That was her reaction. She said, "I will tell him myself not to come to our place anymore. Finish." And I said, "Oh yeah? You tell him that." But he was persistent. He was very determined so one day George talking to her on her own said, "Oh Mumma don't worry, I will look after your daughter." Oh, he put her in his arms, because she was crying -she didn't want him to marry me and bring me over here. We didn't know much about Australia then. I was supposed to be an educated woman, but the only thing I knew about Australia was Prime Minister Menzies. I knew about Rolf Harris and Frank Ifield, remember him? That's all I knew.

I came one Sunday and the next Sunday I got married at St Irene's Greek Orthodox Church in Carlton. That was the rules, you know, my parents wanted it. And also, George's mum -she wanted that to happen too. And she made me very welcome. George, when he met me, had written and told her "Mum, I'm in love", and he told her I was Greek Orthodox. She'd written to me to make me very welcome. IfI decide to come here, she will look after me. And she told me the good and the bad about her son, she didn't want to keep any secrets from me. I've still got all those letters, you know. I knew no-one. I was a stranger amongst strangers. I came Sunday and Tuesday or Wednesday of that week, close friends of my husband gave a party for all the close friends and relatives of George, to meet me. I was shocked, you know, I was young then, inexperienced. I remember that very well.

Angeliki as a policewoman in Cyprus

I already spoke English, but I found it a little bit hard trying to understand the Australian accent at the time. It didn't take long.

George used to have an apartment at Grey Street, East Melbourne, and his mum came from Inglewood and they spring cleaned and painted and they bought new things. And they were waiting for the bride to come! My husband went to the Greek Church, found the best man, booked the reception, the wedding cake, everything. Everything was ready, they were waiting for the bride. And we had a lovely wedding. We had to have two best men -my husband's best friend, and a Greek Cypriot who was chef at a good restaurant at a hotel in East Melbourne -my husband was very good friends with him. Because of some rules with the Church, we had to have a Greek Orthodox best man to change the crowns. That was a must.

I stayed home for a month -and I said to my husband, "I have to work, I don't know what to do all the day in those four walls." He said, "No, you stay home, and I will support you. Your mum will be very upset if I let you go and work." He wanted to protect me, to look after me. But I'm a free spirit, I like to be useful and be with people, I love people. So, I went through the newspaper. When you get to a foreign country you don't even know how to dial a phone you know, you don't know where you are. I went through the newspaper and there was a job there I thought I could do and I made an appointment. The next day I said to him, "You have to take me to this place, I don't know where it is."

And he says, “When did you do that?” And I said, “Yesterday, through the phone.” And I remember he said to me, “Did you know what was all about?” I said, “No, I didn’t know the firm.” The firm was Qantas, but I didn’t know Qantas. I travelled by air to come here but it wasn’t Qantas. And he said to me, “What about if it was a brothel?” Anyway, he took me for the interview and I got the job. And I was at the reservations as a ground hostess. They wanted somebody with Greek language, and the new telecommunications at the time, which was telex. Well, I knew all this. I didn’t know how to do reservations, but they taught me. And I stayed with Qantas for a few years, but when I had my second child, I decided I couldn’t cope any more. So, I stayed home and I became a full-time mum.

Angeliki and George decided to move to Templestowe in 1970.

It was dean ait, away from the heart of the city. Quiet. \"Z/as the best place, we thought at the time, to bring up children, yes. Actually, it was well established where we've chosen. Our house was the last house in the street to finish. And as soon as it finished, we came around and bought it. But they used to call it the "Mortgage Hill" at the time, because all of us we were young people. The primary school my daughters were going to was the Waldau Primary School. They were adding portable classes every year and they never had enough.

I can’t remember meeting Greek people when first I came up here. In Box Hill yes, but not in Doncaster. There wasn’t any Greek church to attend. I think the closest one was Evangelismos at Victoria Street, East Melbourne. That’s the one we knew at the time. Both my daughters they had to be christened at the house where they had Greek Orthodox church services. I was more close to the Church than my husband was. So, that’s why he says it was better for our children to be christened as Orthodox. But now they said, “It’s not fair for the parents to make decisions what religion you are going to believe or attend to. We’ve got our own opinions.” And myself and quite few other people, mainly from Box Hill, we thought it was time to start our own church. And, of course, there was a priest already. The priest was doing the christenings and the marriages in that particular house next to a Catholic church in Whitehorse Road. We got together and we worked. We’ve done different functions, fundraising, to get the money to start this Greek Orthodox church, the Holy Cross at Box Hill. I was a member of the committee too for quite a while, I was the Secretary. We had the Sunday school too, straight away we started Sundayschool for the children. We’ve done all sorts of different things. I was with general committee for the establishment of the church and the inauguration of the church. Worked for three, four years before the church was inaugurated in 1973-1974.

We celebrated both Easters. We had Greek friends to come to our place, or we were going to Greek friends for Easter. And my husband joined that – he enjoyed it. He didn’t have any Greek roots, he was a fifth generation Australian.

Actually, my husband was a friend of the Greeks, he loved Greeks and the traditions and the way of life, yes. He was a warm person. He loved people – and from different cultures and qualities in people.

Yes, and the Australian Easter we celebrated at our place.

We used to speak Greek, even in the presence of my husband, he was trying to learn Greek too. He had a terrible accent. But the girls, they were perfect, speaking perfect Greek and – the dialogue and the necessary conversation was very easily done in Greek. But somehow, when they started the pre-school, we thought, “Oh, it’s good to enrol them at a Greek school”. The Box Hill church had Saturday schools for the language. So we enrolled the first girl, Michelle to attend the Greek school to learn to read and write Greek, that's all.

And one day she comes back from the primary school and she says to me, "Mum! I want to tell you something. Nobody knows your language! Nobody speaks your language at school. So I'm not going to speak Greek any more." That's what she says to me. And I said, "Oh but it's nice for you to learn to speak Greek." "No," she says, "I don't want to!'' And at the same time she started going to the Saturday school. But when she discovered that nobody at the primary school knows my language - my language -that's how she identified Mum's language, she says, "No, I don't want to go to Greek school either." So she raised the flag, she put her foot down and she didn't want to go, So next year we made the same attempt. One Saturday she was going, the next Saturday she was not going. She was putting on acts that she was sick and she didn't want to go and she was crying, so we persisted, but she won. The same thing happened the next year again when both of them were supposed to go, because only a year apart. So we paid for the second year but they never went. That's how far they went with their Greek language.

Angeliki at her piano

But when my husband had his long service leave, we went and stayed in Cyprus for six months so they would get acquainted with the uncles and aunties and grandma and grandpa. They had to learn Greek too, so they have done well with the Greek language there. But as soon as they came back they forgot about it.

I spent a lot of time with music. When my husband was alive I used to play guitar and sing either Greek or English – entertain our friends. He was a musician too, so we were playing different instruments between the two of us. And then when the girls started music they were playing too, so we had our own little band. Greek and English music. I formed with few other people, a Greek-Australian choir. I was with them for six, seven years. That choir became the first Greek choir in Victoria. We were appearing with other choirs in Australian National Days and big days in the society's life for fundraising or to help people, or in big cultural events, some competitions. I had great pleasure and great experiences in my culture.

I returned back to the Greek culture, when I joined and formed this choir, yes. Brought me closer to the Greek culture.

We became more or less the ambassadors of the Greek cultural life. And it was an achievement. And our repertoire, it wasn't only Greek, it was classical too and traditional Greek, islander Greek, different types of music. And we have some good composers in Greece, so we produce some of their own works and we perform them. We had men and women and different nationalities too – Australians, Italians, Spaniards. It was a fantastic choir. We reached hundred and twenty. But then things changed. There's still remnants of it, not the same people but this choir appears on special Greek days.

The Council were using me for interpreting in Greek with their Greek clients, and at the same time – about 1975 the Doncare started. I was with them, too, as volunteer. Somehow, where I thought there were no Greeks around here, all of a sudden there was a flow of the inner communities – inner suburbs coming up here. The Greek retired people moved up here for better living and they needed help. When I came I couldn't see them, but when I got into the community activities I realised there were some. The language, my language, was used just to help them when they had difficulties – family problems, illness. I met quite a few people then. I was missing the contact with the older people then, the Greek old people. So it was very rewarding for me to be in contact with old people. I was missing my mum and dad. Actually we adopted a widow lady who came into our life. She became our adopted grandmother and after my husband had gone, myself and the two girls, we were her adopted family and we looked after her till the end. Her name was Jenny. Fantastic person. I always treasure her memory. My children considered her as their real grandmother. And she was comforting them, many times, and even after my husband passed away, she was still the grandmother we adopted. She died when she was 86 and she has been my reward for the services I offered to the old people, to the old Greek people. Until the end of her life she was with us.

When George asked my hand for marriage and my mother said to him, “I haven't got a daughter to go to Australia.” He told her, “I will look after her. I love her and I promise you I will bring her back to you every two years.” And that's what we did. You see I was working with Qantas and I was getting this lovely concession. I go often nowadays to Cyprus. I feel a foreigner. I cannot adjust to that. Well, most of my adult life is here, I'm more Australian than Cypriot now. I still love my little island, so romantic and it's so beautiful. Mum and Dad are not there any more, there is no attraction. Though of course, I've still got one sister there, the others they are overseas. It's funny. If we accidentally meet a Greek Cypriot from Australia or an Australian – because a lot of Australians go on holidays there and some of them live there permanently or retire there – we straight away feel at home! It's amazing isn't it? But we are a little bit reserved with the locals. Somehow we acquired an accent, being away from home. We don't speak with the same fluency and the air they speak there and they speak the dialect which we've forgotten. I understand very well, but because I don't use it, it's not there any more. So straight away they can realise, “Oh! Where are you from?” “Oh, I'm a Cypriot. And no but we don't live here.” They can trace that straight away. So, yes, and they treat you as a foreigner.

Angeliki in her lounge room sharing a joke

So, actually with this accent, it's like you're building an identity, a new identity, a new existence. You are a foreigner to them there, and still here they say, “Oh, where are you from? You are a foreigner – the accent.” My young daughter, she says to me, “When are you going to get rid of that accent Mum? You put that up, aren't you?” And I said, “No, Helen, it's there. You know, it will go with me to the grave. I will never be able to get rid of it.”

Angeliki, member of the Greek-Australian Choir

Gus Morello

“I'm a person that likes to see that things can be improved, and I just like living here”

Gus Morello in the shell of his new building project behind the Remu Hardware in Templestowe Village

The Morello brothers have run Remu Hardware in Templestowe for over twenty years. Gus, the second eldest in the family, first came to live in the district in 1976, and he currently lives at Park Orchards with his wife and four children. He has had considerable involvement in various aspects of community life in the City of Manningham, including Rotary, Ratepayers of Park Orchards, Templestowe Village Traders and Manningham Commissioners' Advisory Council, to name a few. In recognition of this Gus has received a Menzies Electorate Award for Community Service.

Because of his painful memories, Gus can only allude to the difficult time his family, and many others like them, experienced as post-war Italian migrants. His is a poignant story about straddling two cultures. As a young boy Gus opted to become Australian as soon as possible. Yet he still feels Italian, particularly when it comes to family matters. He regrets that he has not been able to pass on the culture to his children.

I was born in a little village called Guadavale, in Italy. The region is Calabria, but we're not right down to the south, we're virtually on the border. My father was trained as a hairdresser. When he came to Australia he worked as a labourer or a process worker. My mother was a typical European housewife – just looked after the house and the children. My father was probably the black sheep of the family. The family were reasonably comfortable, but my father being the black sheep of the family, there was nothing else for him to stay there for. This is after the war, and he decided to immigrate to Australia. He had family here in Australia, an aunty, and three cousins. He applied to his aunty to sponsor him to come Australia. He paid his own fare. He came here in 1950. His relatives were living on a tobacco farm in Echuca. So he was there for about six months. He decided that, having left his village in Italy, working on the land, that he wasn't going to continue working on the land in Australia – thinking that he was going to Australia for a better life. So he decided to move to Melbourne where he also had some family. From there he got a job with ICI as a process worker. He saved enough to get a deposit to enable us to come here. He took a loan to pay for the full fares, a substantial amount of money too, in those days. There was me, my two brothers and my mum. I didn't even know where Australia was. So I had no preconceived ideas what the place was like.

Those years weren't the best years. You tend to remember the good times and not so much the bad times. So I don't really remember a lot of the details of those first years. Not knowing how to speak English – I was about seven or eight at that time – starting primary school and really not knowing anybody. Even though the school I was going to was multi-cultural – there were a lot of Italians, Polish, a lot of Europeans, in the same predicament as I was.

The reason for my father coming here and bringing us out was to give us a better life, some education. But in the early years I mean there was no focus on or a vision of what you're going to be. I mean it was day to day and getting involved in the daily things that kids did. I tried to play football, at that time not knowing what football was all about. We were playing more soccer than Australian Rules. Cricket was unknown to us. So it took a little time to acclimatise to the Australian way of life — of what kids did. It was a slow process, but once we got the confidence of the others it was quite easy. I can remember very, very clearly that my father had two or three jobs. And one time in particular, when we were celebrating New Year, he wasn't around, but he made sure he came for the twelve o'clock time to celebrate the New Year. And that's what happened. People were working seven days a week to support a family and to be able to buy a house, to buy furniture. I mean we came with nothing. We had nothing, just what we were wearing.

I think it's very important for Australians to really understand how these migrants, these older Italians, left their country, come into a place where they don't know what they're going to. They have to be admired because it must have been a very difficult thing for them to manage in the early years — the late forties, early fifties.

You hear about it sort of on a fringe, but Australians are not focussing. And also second-generation migrants are not focussing very much on the difficulties that the migrants went through. I mean we all know they went through difficulties, but they went through enormous difficulties.

My family's friends were totally Italians. It was a little community there — like a “Little Italy” — a little enclave of the village that they came from. There were a lot of Italians who came from our village and little surrounding towns from our village living in Deer Park. So they felt quite at home, but at the same time they missed their homeland. We go to a lot of funerals now because that whole era of Italians that migrated in the 1950s are virtually dying off. I don't keep in touch with them now, but when there is a funeral we tend to go, because they were friends of many, many years. My father keeps in touch with them all the time. In fact I've got my uncles and cousins from my mother's side, and I've got two cousins from my father's side living in Deer Park also. So we've still got that link there. It's like going back to the old country.

The Italians who migrated to Australia in those years still maintain their traditions — their way of life. The strictness of family life — what you can do, what you can't do, respecting your parents, totally. And food-wise, they haven't changed very much. I mean even though I'm married to an Australian, I do crave Italian food. But in my early years, in my teens, I was focussing more on being an Australian or being part of the Australian way of life, and my friends were nearly all Australians. I've had very few friends who were Italians. And it's funny because now with my children I find it disappointing that I haven't taught them the Italian way, and the cultures. I've assimilated very, very well into the Australian way of life, and in a way that's good, but in the other way my children have lost the culture. They haven't really followed the culture of Italians. Hopefully as they get older they would like to be part of that culture. We haven't brought them up as strict as my parents brought me up, but we still have a strict way of life at home. I'm very demanding, and want to know what they do. Actually I really don't know the Australian's side, how they bring their children up. But I would like to think that my children are a bit more controlled, but not to the sense where they lose their individuality.

As we grew up we made decisions as a family, and we decided that we should move on to other parts of Melbourne and away from the Italian culture that was in Deer Park. We decided to move to Rosanna. It was my older brother and I — having been working, and having seen all these other parts of Melbourne — we decided that Rosanna was the best place to be. So we bought a house in Martins Lane, Rosanna. When I say we, my parents did.

My older brother started work at fourteen. I started work, I think, at sixteen. I was an apprentice stonemason with a company for a couple of years. They decided to send me to RMIT to learn drafting. They saw the potential there that I could become something to what I am now. But at the time who was to know? And I left that because the dust that I was breathing in was no good for my health. So I applied for a job at Carlton and United Breweries, as an apprentice architectural student. And they were giving me three days a week to go to the RMIT just across the road from the CUB in Carlton. I was there for four years — worked and did an architectural course at RMIT. Unfortunately I never finished the course.

Gus in the shell of his new business development in Templestowe Village

Gus worked as an architect for a couple of firms in Melbourne, then went overseas for five years and worked on a number of large architectural projects in England and the Middle East.

I toured Europe over those years, and I did about four trips to my home town. I met my wife, an Australian girl, on the boat going over to Europe. It was a forty-day trip to London. I was the first to marry, of the four brothers. My parents would have loved for me to marry an Italian girl, purely just for communication. There was never any animosity, they were very accepting of her. We married in 1976.

Before we went overseas my brother and I had bought some land together in Betton Crescent, Warrandyte. It was three acres. When I came back from overseas and got married, I decided to take over the land and build a house there. I just loved the bush and the undulating hills. But prior to that we bought a place in Research-Warrandyte Road for our first family home. We were there for three years and then I built on that land in Betton Crescent. I built quite a large house, very earthy, lots of timbers. It was like mountain goat country, it was very steep, but we liked it. We had our first child after we moved there. And we lived in Betton Crescent for three years. From there we moved on to Templestowe, to an old house. I renovated the place, totally changed the whole concept of the house. Made it from a ten square house into a sixty square house, which we lived in for three years. I think it was 1989 when we moved to Park Orchards, where we still reside. I always wanted to live in Park Orchards even when we were living in Warrandyte. Park Orchards just appealed to me. After living in those two houses in Warrandyte — being very steep land, I wanted to have something on the same level and flat.

Not long after he returned from overseas Gus and his brothers decided to go into business with his cousins who lived in Deer Park. First they purchased a hotel in North Melbourne. Gus and his older brother, Joe, an accountant, continued working in their professions while the other two brothers and cousins ran the pub. Later they bought Remu Hardware, relocating it to Templestowe Village, where they still run the family business.

My older brother and myself were still working, but we were assisting my two other brothers and my cousins in running the pub. We were in that pub for three years. We decided that that wasn't the way we wanted to live our life, so we decided to buy a hardware business. We looked around and this business was for sale. It's builders' supplies, no retail, just purely to builders. The only person who knew about hardware in the building industry was me, my background being in architecture, so we bought it and my two brothers, Vince and Tony, and my cousins Dominic and Raphael, ran the actual hardware business. It was operating from a place in South Blackburn. We had an option to buy the property after three years. We decided not to buy the property and we relocated to Manningham.

I was living in Warrandyte, my brother Joe, was living in Ringwood and my two younger brothers were living with my parents in Rosanna. So we located to Templestowe in 1980. And we bought the property here at Templestowe. It was built like a little mall – a little shopping centre, which wasn't really functioning as that. It was like a white elephant. So we bought the whole complex and we added on to accommodate the builders' hardware, and we've been operating from here since. The customers are all over Victoria. We were servicing builders even in Tasmania, King Island and New South Wales. The boom in the late eighties was tremendous – all the orchards were subdivided into house blocks. So it was a growth area. It was also a reason to move to Templestowe too, but that wasn't the main reason. The reason why we came here is because we were living in the area.

It is a family business, there are the four brothers – Joe, me, Vince and Tony. We've all married Australian ladies. The wives are not involved in the business, even though Lorraine, my younger brother's wife, works here. The brothers make the decisions. Sally, my older brother's wife, she comes in because he's the accountant and he's the one that tells us whether we are making a profit, so he's the money man. Sally comes in about twice a week to help with the books with the GST. I'm the building side of it, sort of the developing side of it. Vince and Tony virtually run the business. They do all the orders, they're in contact with the builders. We are developing part of the property here at Templestowe at the moment for eight shops and we are proposing to build two apartments on our property. So I'm really developing this property. What we have here hopefully we can retire on. We employ three drivers. We've got Russell who's been with us for about fifteen years, we've got Colleen, and we've got a young lady just started, her first job after school, and that's about it. We keep our staff for a long time. The girl that's just started with us now, she has replaced a girl called Rebecca who just left to live in England. She was with us from the day she left school. Being a family business where we are very open, and our staff is really part of the family.

Templestowe Village is definitely multicultural. There are Greeks, Australians, Italians – there are a lot of Italians. There are two or three Greek businesses there. There's the Templestowe Cellars, which is run by Lula Black and her family. There's Harry Ahimastos who owns the milk bar. There's Carlucci's owned by Italians and run by Italians. There are three hairdressers who are Italians. We've got a Chinese restaurant in the Village. We've got three Indian restaurants.

Having a business here in the Templestowe Village for some years, I decided to get involved in the activity of the Village in the late eighties. The Village was slowly dying, and I decided to get involved in rejuvenating the Village. We approached the Council for some assistance, some funding, and I've been involved in the creation of a new Templestowe Village, with the Enhancement Scheme, the beautification, the whole lot. So it's taken a lot of my time and effort in achieving what has been achieved – with the help of the Council of course. I was one of the creators of the Templestowe Village Festival. Templestowe Village was one of the early shopping centres in the City of Manningham. A lot of people don't know this, but Keep's Corner, which is the corner of James and Anderson Street, was one of the earliest trading areas, because that used to be the way to Warrandyte, to the goldfields. I thought we'd better do something to create a real village shopping centre. And we thought having a festival once a year was one of the ways we were going to achieve that, and that was eight years ago. So I've been involved since day one in that. I got involved in the Enhancement Scheme. That was another way of getting the Village to what it is today. I'm a person that likes to see that things can be improved, and I just like living here. I love the river, I love Templestowe, I love the parks, just everything about the City – the people, my friends.

But if Australia plays Italy at soccer I would barrack for Italy. There is no reason, it's just me. I feel the connection that I should be barracking for Italy. I mean it's very hard to know what your heart tells you. You can't control your heart. So that's me. I get the story at home whenever Australia and Italy play, I will always barrack for Italy and my kids say to me, "You're a traitor". And I say, "Look, hang on, I'm not a traitor". There's something there that I really can't put my finger on. That's the way I am.

Simon & Jacky Law

"If I could wave a magic wand, every migrant should come to Warrandyte for a little time, to settle in ..."

Simon and Jacky Law with a calligraphic work from a temple in Hong Kong

Simon Law came to Australia from Hong Kong as a student in 1955. He studied Architecture at the University of Melbourne, then did two years' work experience with the Commonwealth Department of Works. Because of the White Australia Policy, Simon was required to leave Australia at the end of his studies.

Jacky came from England with her husband in search of better job opportunities in 1964. They separated a few months after they arrived, and Jacky decided to return to England. Although she met Simon before she left Australia, romance did not blossom until they met up again in England.

Simon begins the story by recalling his first impressions of Australia:

I was born in Shanghai. My father was a merchant dealing with materials, like flannels, cloth, importing material from England and distributing to China. It was a very good living. In fact I think my parents were more than millionaires in China. But then of course the whole thing got knocked over by communism. When it came they lost everything, except cash and the shop in Hong Kong. We went to Hong Kong in November 1948. I did my secondary education there, and when I finished Leaving, I came over to Australia. At that time to go to Hong Kong University was very difficult. My two elder brothers and my elder sister were destined to go to America. When it came to my turn my parents couldn't afford it. Australia was the cheapest one of all the overseas countries you could go to. I came to Australia as a private student, December 1955, to do Matriculation and then went to Melbourne University to study Architecture.

I was eighteen when I came. It was like a big adventure. It's quite different from Hong Kong. To some extent Australia was quite old fashioned. Before I came we had all these different types of clothing made, suits and things like that. In Hong Kong at that time the style was very American or Italian, but in Australia it was quite different. For example trouser cuffs were twenty-two inches wide. One of our friends said, "When you go to Australia you've got to conform with the style, make sure you've got much bigger trouser cuffs". And we had to enlarge them, but the biggest you could do was about eighteen inches. I had a summer suit, light blue and very fine wool, and that was just unseen in Australia. Whenever we went on any train the people looked at us, stared at us all the time.

Before we came we were warned that Australia was quite racist against Chinese. Apparently in the forties and fifties there was a lot of anti-Chinese things going on. But at that time I only came in as a student so it didn't really worry me. I would be here only for a short period of time, finish my studies and then I'd be off. In fact I didn't come across any racism whatsoever. I mixed quite well with the Australians. In the mid fifties there were maybe thirty or forty Asian students. I knew most of them by sight. But since 1958 there was a real explosion of Asian students coming over, especially at RMIT.

When I finished matriculation, my father wrote to me and said that he was more or less bankrupt. He couldn't supply me for the rest of the course, so I've got to think carefully whether I wanted to stay here, and if I did, what do I do. Otherwise I could go back to Hong Kong or go to Taiwan to study. At that time my landlady, Mrs Hardy in Elwood, was the telephonist manager in Myer Emporium. She was working there with Sidney Myer. She said, “Don't worry about it, I'll see what I can do for you”. She must have got talking to Ken Myer, and it ended up Ken Myer would pay my first year university fees and promised me all holidays I could get a job in Myer's until I finish. As a private student I was not allowed to work except during holidays, so that was the arrangement. Now without Ken Myer supporting me for the first year, I don't think I would have got through. But after the first year my brothers and sister in America were sending me some money to tide me over. With a job during the holiday in Myer's, this tided me through the whole course.

I came on a private student's permit. The permit was to finish the education, that's about it. At the end of study when I graduated, I knew I would be given two years' practical experience, and then I need to leave Australia. In the beginning of 1963 I moved from Myer's to the Department of Works, for my practical experience. At first I thought I would like to stay in Australia because of the vast areas of bush. But as I studied a bit deeper, in architecture, I think the lure of the European architecture came into my head as well. So I would say I would be fifty-fifty about wanting to stay. I knew one thing though, I didn't want to go back to Hong Kong. I didn't want to go back to Hong Kong to practice because at the time Hong Kong was very small and I heard there was a lot of corruption. Being young and pretty idealistic, I wouldn't go to where there's so much corruption, so I just decided to go to England or Canada. I applied for a few jobs in England and few in Canada. One of the English jobs replied first, and I went to England. It's one bit of luck. I learned a lot more in England. I was glad I was there for the five years.

Jacky talks about her background in England, and how she discovered a new direction for her life during her first year in Australia.

I was born just outside of London in a place called Kingston. Having experienced the bombing raids of London, Mother moved us into a nearby town of East Molesey, which is better known as Hampton Court.

Simon with fellow students and their landlady Mrs Hardy at their lodgings

Jacky with Jason, Surrey UK, 1967

So I grew up in a very lovely area. I used to walk the dog every day in Hampton Court Palace. My father was a Maintenance Engineer, he worked hands-on for a chemical company. When I left school I worked in London.

I came to Australia in January 1964 and I left in December. During my stay I was working in the best job anybody could ever have, at Coonac Government Rehabilitation Centre in Toorak. I supervised a couple of intellectually disabled girls, and we would serve tea and sandwiches for lunch, making sure that people were able to eat. We had a couple of people coming up for assessment from the country, and they were without limbs. It was the first time I'd ever become aware that there was a group of people that wasn't as privileged as me. In fact it was the best experience of my life, because it changed the way I thought about things. I'd been working for a firm in London, Wedgwood China, I loved it but it never ever made me feel good, as I did when I was working with people who were handicapped in some way.

Anyway I went back to England. It was ten pounds to migrate, but you have to stay for two years. I was under two years, so I had to pay back the fare, which is fair enough. The Immigration Department were kind enough to ask me did I want somebody to counsel me, in case there was anything that could be done to stop me from going home. I said no. I really did want to go home, for no other reason other than I actually missed my family. Of course I wasn't that old, looking back I realise that I was very immature. I was only twenty-three — going on sixteen!

I then had a letter from Simon saying that he was going to come to England. I'd met Simon early in our trip, but I didn't get to know him very well at all. But because I was a link in England he wrote and told me, and asked would I find him accommodation in the place where he was to be working, which I duly did. He came in March 1965 and I showed him around London. Gradually our friendship grew, and that was it for us.

I was working in London for Wedgwood — I went back to my old job — but I did feel that there were more things that I could do. So when I became pregnant with my first child, I was made aware by the health centre that they were going to start a club for handicapped locals in the area. And I said I'd love to help. Social work it was to be, and that set me on my course. I used to go in the evening once a week and just be with them. And from that moment on I focussed on that sort of voluntary work.

In 1967 our son Jason was born, which was an absolute delight. We had to put a lot of thought into that – I mean being a mixed race couple, plus the fact that we weren't married, you really think very, very, very carefully about bringing a human being into this world. Then in 1969 our second son was born, Toby, another delight. Now all of this time, since the time Simon arrived in England, I noticed gradually he was becoming quite homesick – homesick for Australia. It was really very sad because, we'd managed to buy this little house. But I always felt there was something missing. Every time he'd come back from the dentist, he'd say, "They had this calendar with the gum trees". I can still remember that. He was always focussed on these gum trees. I used to think, "What are we worrying about gum trees for?" I don't know whether I was very much of a help in consoling him. Anyway I didn't really want to know, because I thought I couldn't leave my mum and dad again, no way, they'd be devastated.

Simon continues the story of how he was recruited back to Australia. Since he left, the White Australia Policy had been eased. From 1966 non-Europeans possessing qualifications to fill vacant professional and technical jobs would be accepted as permanent residents and be eligible for citizenship after five years. Simon and Jacky were a bit sceptical, but decided to put it to the test. They found a significant change, even to the extent that a job was held for Simon when various circumstances delayed their arrival in Australia. The Laws now have a family joke attributing their migration to Simon's piles!

When I had my haemorrhoid operation I came across this Australian doctor – he happened to know Professor Lewis at Melbourne University, Architecture. That was 1968. We talked about it, "Why don't you go back?" "Oh I can't go back" I said, "the White Australia Policy". "Oh no, haven't you heard, it's changed in 1966?" And a funny thing is that after my operation, there was in the Architects Journal – a weekly journal in England – an advertisement by the Department of Works in Australia, and that was actually where I worked before. So I thought "I'll give it a go and see what happens". The salary was attractive, and also the offer that the successful recruitment will involve first-class travel to Australia and settlement and all this sort of thing. Of course another thing was a test of whether the White Australia Policy had really finished. If they refused me to come back there'd have to be a White Australia Policy, because my degree was here, I worked in the same Department and there was no earthly reason why they could refuse me. When my interview came they said, "You got the job". I told Jacky I would like to come back. At first Jacky wasn't quite sure whether she wanted to come, but eventually she said yes. And once she decided to come, of course her mother wanted to come over as well, and the only hurdle was her father. But he said, "Oh I'll come any time". So suddenly we all decided to come here. I came back in 1970 in January. They came eleven months after I came.

However when Jacky followed with the children, she felt the lingering effects of the White Australia Policy in the anomaly of an endorsed British passport.

The children being so young we decided that Simon would go first, find the accommodation, and I would come out afterwards. Now the reason for that was my divorce was about to take place in London. It never did, the court threw it out because they said as my legal husband was domiciled in Australia, and I was going to Australia, it should be heard here. So, OK that was it. Then Mr Silverman of Australia House rang me and said, "Look we've got a problem. We've got to get you into Australia before March because of the children's visa. If you don't go by March we'll have to start the procedure all over again. It's only because of the children". I'd got the two children on my passport because they were so young. I'd had my passport returned to me from Australia House and I really hadn't taken a lot of notice. So he got me on a plane within three weeks. I flew to Australia on my own with two babies under two and half – if anybody wants to talk about a nightmare. It was unbelievable. They put me into first class, which was absolutely wonderful. Three daughters of the Minister of Agriculture of New Zealand held one of the babies for virtually the whole trip. I know that may sound silly, that little bit of trivia, but that's absolutely true.

I went to Hong Kong first. When I got to Sydney I had the two babies and a rice cooker – somebody had given me a rice cooker as a present – and I'm trying to carry a rice cooker and two babies on a pusher. We did Customs there, and the guy said to me, "Look I'm sorry, but there's an irregularity with your passport". I said, "Well I can't see how there could be because I've travelled from Hong Kong". He went back and huddled up with another fellow and came back with this other fellow and said, "Well how long have you had your passport?" So I told him. He looked at the children. Now Jason was two and half with very tight curly hair although he did have a round face. Toby was fast asleep in the pusher with his head down. It ended up with about four or five men all talking, and they came back and they said, "Look we're very sorry, your passport has an irregular endorsement on it". And I said, "Where?" I showed it to him, and there on the bottom it says, "This endorsement refers to the children Jason and Toby". They said, "Yes, that's why it's irregular". I said "Oh, do you think it's got anything to do with their father being Chinese?" And the guy, he was just so embarrassed. He just said, "I do apologise". If they'd seen the children as being of mixed race they probably would have understood the endorsement.

Jacky's passport, with the racially based 'endorsement' for Toby and Jason

The endorsement was put on by Australia House in London. That tells everybody that the children are not white. Well it's no good saying "not British" because they are British, but they're non-white, and this is why the customs people said I can't have a British passport with an endorsement. If you've got a British passport you've automatically got entry. But the children didn't have automatic entry because they're coloured, so they've got this endorsement. That would not exist now I'm told. But this was 1970. I think if this endorsement was put on a passport now I would fire up and probably chain myself to Australia House's fence. But this time I was what, 26, 27 – I wasn't very politically aware. After that I used to look at it and think, "Isn't it amazing, that little endorsement, my two children couldn't get into the country without that?" Whereas I can come and go and some of the biggest thieves under the sun have been coming to Australia on the Ten Pound Scheme.

I didn't want to come back the second time, just couldn't see the reason to go back. But I came because I was Simon's partner. I knew and accepted that I could never earn as much money as Simon, so I accepted that he was to be – the old fashioned word – the "breadwinner". You see another thing, I've got the most delightful partner. He is, after even thirty-four years, the most wonderful partner anybody could have, he really is. So I would follow him anywhere. But the added bonus was that my parents had said, "We would love to come". Of course they'd love to come, we had the grandchildren.

Simon and Jacky lived for the first few years in Melbourne's middle suburbs, where their daughter was born and Jacky became accustomed to Australian ways.

When we lived in Glen Iris I used to push the pram along the road and think, "If I dropped dead nobody would know who I was". I was terrified because I didn't know anybody. But as soon as the children went to kindergarten, you had twenty-five contacts. You start helping out at kinder and you meet people and then you start taking turns in doing this, that and the other. Then somebody tells you that the roof of the kindergarten's falling in and you say, "Well surely you just get onto the Council". And they say "No, you're not in England now". Of course things were very different. You had to raise the money and I don't think that that's such a bad thing. Fundraising was a new thing to me.

The lady across the road said to me, "I'm going to take you to the kinder, they've got a lamington drive". I said "A lamington drive, wow". I tidied myself up and dressed the kids up. Simon got the Melways out, there is no such place as "Lamington". I said, "There definitely is, ring up the lady across the road". He said "Well she must know". Anyway off we went and as she drove me around to the kindergarten I said, "What is a lamington drive, where is it?" She said "It's at the kinder". I said "Oh I've got this wrong, I honestly thought we were going to a place called Lamington". She roared with laughter, "I'm not going to tell you another thing, wait until you get in". And as we walked in the door she said, "This is a lamington drive". I swear I'd never ever heard of such a thing. There were these ladies up to the eyeballs in chocolate, coconut, sponge cake. Nowadays you just buy them all. But they used to cut the sponge, somebody would throw the sponge in jam, then dip it in chocolate and then coconut and you'd end up with these square things. I have never, never eaten a lamington since. I can't bring myself to look at a lamington!

Simon and Jacky eventually settled in Warrandyte, as did many of Jacky's extended family who followed them to Australia. Simon explains why they moved to Warrandyte.

Jacky and Simon in their garden

When Jacky's parents came I said, "We've got to find somewhere so that they can have a house". So Jacky looked in all the different places and found one in Warrandyte. It was quite a dilapidated place and then we thought we could do the whole thing up, because we had so much manpower there. So we did it up, but in the meantime we stayed in Canterbury and then Surrey Hills, because at that time Warrandyte only had one primary school, and there was no high school at all. So we thought we'd stay down there for a while and see what happened. Eventually, when the house price had gone up such a lot, we sold our Surrey Hills house for almost double the price we bought it for. So we came to Warrandyte – that was 1976.

What I like about Warrandyte is just the bushland really and the river's nearby. When we first came here, once you reach Anderson's Creek Road, already you could smell the difference, there were orchards everywhere there, and the temperature was lower. But now of course it is different, it's all developed into the suburbs now.

Jacky explains how the whole extended family has found their place in Warrandyte. Jacky herself has worked in a range of community and welfare jobs, in both paid and voluntary capacities, including running a drop-in centre in Warrandyte and the canteen at Warrandyte High School. She is now the secretary of the Warrandyte Senior Citizens Club.

When we settled down and Simon was happy to be back, he just blossomed. And I've often wondered what would have happened if we'd reared our children in England. The difference is we've had a very, very privileged existence here. Warrandyte is just the most beautiful place to rear children and have a family.

I never consciously chose it but I do realise I've always been at heart a "village girl" so to speak. I've never been a city person even though I've worked in London for years. The geography of this place is so much like the town I grew up in, it's quite remarkable. And I know quite a number of English people who have said the same thing about their home town. Warrandyte is still very "villagey". If I could wave a magic wand, every migrant should come to Warrandyte for a little time, to settle in and then move on. I really think that all migrants should go to country towns. I think if everybody wants to get a good grounding of Australia it's best to do it in the country. For the Law family, it's been the wisest choice. My thirty-three year old – whether it's his sense of humour – people say to him, "Where are you from?" He knows that they want to know his origins, but he'll say "Warrandyte".

My mother, who is eighty and lives here in Warrandyte, said it was the best thing that they ever did. Mother went back to England for a holiday and brought back her sister. My aunt set foot in Warrandyte and never left. Then her three daughters, one by one, and all their families, all started to come. Then one of my brothers decided to come and so it goes on.

YEAR OF THE DRAGON (AUSSIE SPECIES): Invitation to a Chinese New Year Party at the Laws' House

Chain migration. But what is so amusing is that they all came to Warrandyte, and in England we'd never lived in the same town. We didn't even know each other properly. And here we all were in the same village. They've contributed a lot in the community. Cousins are all involved in the CFA, their children are involved, so they really are part of the community. Mother was Secretary of the Senior Cits for over twenty years. So I think you can't help but belong because it's been so good to us.

After you're here for a number of years you go back and you know you don't fit in there. I've been back twice, and the second time cured me forever. When I went back in 1998 I just felt I didn't belong, I didn't like it there. I felt Australian, I just wanted to come home. And all the years that we've travelled to Asia, I would get to the top of Harris Gully Road and look over and see Warrandyte and, oh, I knew I'd be home. I'd get home and I'd want to hug a tree. I bore everybody with talking about Warrandyte. They say, "Oh, you're so one-eyed". But I am. That's how I feel and I feel very Australian. I don't feel I owe anything to England at all. In fact being married to an Asian has made me sometimes very, very ashamed of being British, because of the past history. You know, their colonising attitude and that's still there in many ways.

Simon was naturalised in the first three years and we were advised to put the children onto his naturalisation certificate, so they did. Then I filled up the form and went up myself to be naturalised. But my father just would not get "nationalised" as he insisted on calling it. He lived here for many years and loved it, went back to England on a holiday, was taken very, very ill. The first thing he said was, "I want to go home". And at his first opportunity he became naturalised, both him and my mother. All the years of doing what I call an Alf Garnett act about England, it meant nothing. So we're all naturalised, we're all Australians.

And Simon knows where he belongs:

I feel Australian actually – Chinese/Australian, put it that way. From the age of eighteen to twenty-seven I was here, and five years in England and then back here again. So really my Chinese culture influence stopped at eighteen. When I was a student here I never knew when the Chinese New Year was, because at that time the Chinese culture wasn't prominent. You only had a few Chinese restaurants in town. In fact I speak Cantonese much better nowadays than, say, even ten years ago, because of the Chinese restaurants much closer by. When I go to Hong Kong now they say, "You're not Chinese at all the way you react or the way you talk about things?" But I don't feel that different myself. Also being here ten years before I became naturalised, I just felt myself gradually move into it. I was naturalised in 1973. At first it was supposed to be five years wait, but in 1972 when Whitlam got in he changed the rule. After three years all Asian migrants can be naturalised.

Con & Toula Karanikolopoulos

“We were the first people to start a Greek school in Doncaster”

Con and Toula Karanikolopoulos with their collection of Greek icons

Toula and Con Karanikolopoulos were both born into farming families in southern Greece. They grew up not far from each other in the vicinity of Kalamata, and both trained as primary teachers. They met when teaching at the same school, married and had two young daughters. In 1974 Con and Toula decided to give up their teaching careers in Greece, and come to Australia. The purpose of the move was to set up a school to teach the Greek language and culture to children of Greek migrants. In 1975 they established the Nestoras Greek School, with branches in Northcote, Thornbury, Collingwood and Doncaster. Con and Toula have made their home in East Doncaster.

Toula remembers her early life on her family's olive farm in the village of Paniperi:

We had to help, because in those days we had to try not to waste anything. If any olives had dropped off the trees before the collection the little kids were supposed to go and pick them up. There were two small factories in the village and we had to take the olives there. When I was very little they didn't have the mechanical ones, they used to do it with the horses turning the stone, like a mill. My father had a horse and he was going to work there, because we didn't have enough olives ourselves to be occupied all the time. I remember going to see him there, and they had a treat for us. They would cut a big piece of bread, toast it at the fire, and they had big pots with fresh oil and would dip it in the oil and sprinkle oregano and salt on it. That was the best treat we ever had.

In my village there was a complete primary school with six grades, but we had only one teacher. When I was there it was about 64 kids in one room, with one teacher. But everybody learnt, I went to secondary school in Petalidi, the head village which was about two hours walking. There weren't any buses coming to my village. We had to walk or go with a donkey or a horse. We had to rent a room in Petalidi, and we stayed there all week. We went to school on Saturday, and Saturday afternoon we went home to our village for one night. I had to sit for exams, and then I got in to the teachers college in Lamia. After that I was very lucky. I got work straight away near my village. I worked there for five and half years before I came to Australia.

Con tells a similar story of education and teaching in the villages. He goes on to explain the decision to migrate to Australia.

I was born in a village outside of Petalidi, called Kastania. But only three to five families live there now. Everybody's gone – to Athens, abroad, everywhere. I finished the primary school in Petalidi, then I went to the high school in Messini, fifteen kilometres from Petalidi. After that I did some exams and I passed into Paedagogical Academy in Tripolis. It was a teachers' college. And I was waiting almost four years until I got a position in Government schools, and during this period I was working as a farmer, helping my parents, until I got a position as a primary teacher not far away from my village. During the holidays I still helped my parents – picking the figs, sultanas, and all the agricultural work. After three years I was transferred to Toula's village. I was teaching there for five years, then I was transferred to Petalidi and I worked there for another three years – eleven years as a Greek teacher before we decided to come in Australia.

This period of time there was a dictatorship in Greece and we as teachers had to work a lot, and not be paid enough. I had to organise a lot of speeches around the area of Petalidi without being paid for the extra work. I had two brothers here in Australia. George, who is younger than me, was established as an accountant. My youngest brother Sam came after he finished high school, and also started to be an accountant. So George wrote us and he suggested we come to Australia because there is an opportunity for us as Greek teachers to start our own school. That made us take the decision to come in Australia.

Toula adds:

We had a big increase in our salary in Greece and we thought it was great. Con wrote to his brother and said, “We're getting now eleven thousand drachmas – the both of us for a month”. He's an accountant, and he said, “Oh, they work for nothing”. He sent us a letter that said, “Come here, you'll find work here, and it will be better for you. You decide and send me a telegram – not a letter a telegram”. And Con thought it was a good idea. I knew it was a good idea, but tears started to come to my eyes, because I never thought I'm going to leave Greece. And I remembered, when I was little in primary, three girls from my village leaving and everybody going into the centre of the village saying to them goodbye. And that was something bad about leaving for me. My teacher said “Oh Toula when you grow up will you be a dressmaker – we'll send you to Australia”.

When we came we stayed in Fitzroy, over the accountants' office that my brothers-in-law had. My brother-in-law was kind enough to have us there for free. We didn't buy anything, he had everything ready for us. And the first Monday we were here Con started work at the accounting office. Fitzroy was Greek. There were so many Greek shops in Smith Street. Everybody came to see us from our villages, and you'd go shopping and we'd see them on our way to the shops. Yes, it really wasn't like you went to a different country. It's only when you had to go to the doctor or listen to the radio – there was no Greek radio then.

We started the school the first February we were here. It was eighteen months later we bought our house in Doncaster, because some of our friends lived in Doncaster and George had a house in Donvale. We liked the area and it was good for the kids to have friends nearby to play. It's quiet, it's beautiful and – I don't know. When we came for the house it was amazing, I remember it. I thought “Oh that's the area we like”. We bought this house so we can buy something maybe better later, but then we said, “No, no, we're not moving any more, that's it!” And we are here twenty-four years.

Con also liked Doncaster:

I couldn't imagine how Australia was before I came here. Well the first impression was that it was completely different from Greece – the houses, the streets, especially in the inner suburbs where almost all the houses then were made out of boards – wood. I remember my brother took us with a car in Bulleen area to show us some beautiful brick houses – to give us an impression about the good areas, and we also came in Doncaster. That's why we decided later to buy a house in Doncaster. When we first came to visit some friends from our village I was impressed with the trees, the green area, the hills. It reminded me of some areas of our place in Greece – it was not a flat area. We are used to this kind of small hills and I think it gives a better impression. There were a lot of Greeks, but now I think there are more, because I know many families moved from the inner suburbs to outside suburbs, especially Doncaster.

It was not difficult to establish their Greek school, as Toula explains:

The first year we started four schools – Doncaster, Thornbury, Northcote and Collingwood. My brother-in-law knew a lot of Greek people because of his work, and he sent letters to everybody. We had to go door to door and leave brochures in Northcote, because there was a lot of Greek people there. We didn't have to do any advertising for Doncaster, because people were saying, “Come to Doncaster too, there'll be lots of kids”. And Doncaster was very successful from the first year. We were the first people to start a Greek school in Doncaster. We had rooms in the little school that's near the Council, then we moved to Church Street High School, and we've been there since then. The Doncaster school was on Saturday afternoon – two till six. Collingwood was on Saturday mornings from nine to one. We had to rush from there to Doncaster. And we were picking kids on our way here with a van, because parents had shops or they had to work and they couldn't bring them to school. Later we bought a school bus. There was a big

need of teachers when we came because there were not a lot of Greek teachers from Greece here. There was a club of about fifteen teachers with certificates. The rest were not qualified teachers and they were teaching only because they knew the language. The kids that we had in those days were Australian born, they knew the language very, very well, because their parents wanted to go back and they were very strict, and they were speaking only Greek at home. But now these kids, they've got their families, and they don't see the need to learn the language as much as their parents did, and they speak English to their kids. Now the grandparents teach the youngsters more Greek than their parents. Most of the kids we have now speak Greek or at least understand.

Con:

The name of the school is Nestor, from the name of an ancient Greek king who was famous as a wise man. We started the first year in February 1975 with forty kids. The school was growing, about ten years we reached six hundred kids, but after the first ten to fifteen years it started to decline and we have half of that number now. The reason is because a lot of other Greek schools came to the area and also some Greek parents do not send their kids to the Greek schools. But only a few, it's a minor percentage. I think most of the kids they don't realise the importance of learning the language and their culture when they're little. But when they reach Year 9, they are starting to change attitudes. They feel better the importance of learning the Greek language and culture, which is very important to the Greek families. We have third generation kids in school. But most of the people still try to keep their tradition and language. It's so important to them. We also teach Greek history, some religion – the Orthodox religion – and dances, music. Through the other subjects of course they learn the language better – through the history, through the songs. We employ another ten teachers, and we teach also. We run the classes once per week in each school. The first years we followed the curriculum of the Greek Education Department. We had the books, and we still have books sent free from the Greek Government. But four years ago, when the ethnic schools were recognised, we had to follow the curriculum of the Victorian Education Department. We wrote the curriculum for every class and we submitted those documents to the Education Department to get the recognition. Our school is now fully recognised from Preps to Year 12.

Students from the Nestoras Greek School prepare for the Greek National Day Parade, 2000

Toula has made a range of traditional Greek costumes for the school students to wear in the plays and concerts that form a regular part of the Nestoras School's activities

Usually we have a big concert at the end of the year, and we try to have in that concert different parts of the history, and what the kids are taught during the year. When it's the Olympic Games we do something about the Olympic Games. When Athens got the OK to organise the Olympic Games, we did something about Athens. We did parts of the Panathinea, which was the procession for the goddess Athena. And we copy some things from the frieze on the Parthenon. In some areas they used to embroider the ladies' costumes with metallic thread, which is very hard to work with. I tried to copy some but I couldn't even understand how they did it. But the ones I made I'm trying to copy from the books, trying to find the materials in Australia, which was very hard. Sometimes I have to use an alternative, because the climate is so different here. We use them in summer for the Greek National Day. Sometimes it's thirty-eight degrees. You can't have the kids in a hot costume like that. And I made some of the ancient Greek ones for our ancient history plays. I enjoy making them. It's a lot of work, but I think it's worth the trouble. The only way to have the kids in contact with the history and the traditional dancing is to have the proper costumes. And they wear them, they take videos from the concerts, they have photos, and I think that will help them to remember. And to help them also feel that they carry a very important culture and maybe make them understand that they have to be responsible to keep it up with their children and the people that are going to come after. The representative of the Greek Consulate who works for the Education Department office in the Consulate, he said that we are the only school who is doing this, and maybe the other schools have to try and do the same. I was really surprised he said that, I wasn't expecting it.

Toula and Con have continued many of their Greek traditions and celebrations in their family life, albeit with an Australian twist, as Toula explains:

We celebrate Christmas with the Greek way and the Australian way. We do the things that we used to do in the village - making the Christmas breakfast, but we do it on the evening before. And we don't cook the meal that we used to have for lunch, because it's summer here and it's more enjoyable to have lamb on the spit and salads. We take it in turns with the family, and we go to George's house or Sam's house or my brother's house. And there would be twenty people and more sometimes. Everybody brings something. But the main work is done at the house that we are going to. I make the Christmas bread like we used to make in the village. Christmas bread is a normal sort of bread dough but you add to it cinnamon and cloves and a bit of sugar. You put it in a round baking dish and you do over it a cross with dough, and you put five walnuts - one in the centre and one at each end of the cross. In the olden days they did a lot of nice decorating on breads. But here I don't do a lot of dough decorations, I do only a few flowers and maybe some zigzags. Then you leave it to rise, and when it's ready to put it in the oven you spread egg on it and you sprinkle it with sesame and you bake it. That's the Christmas bread.

Easter is a bigger celebration. We still try to keep it going on here. Sometimes it's easier if it falls the same time with the Australian Easter, because people have to go to work, before Easter or after. Most of the ladies here still do what we used to do in Greece - a nice spring-cleaning before Easter. That week it's a lot of things you have to do. You can organise yourself to make the sweets a few days before Easter. On Thursday you have to do the eggs, and you're supposed to dye them only in red dye, but now they change and we use other colours. You decorate them with a leaf, or a flower, something that you know is going to turn out nice. Before you dye them you wrap an egg with a leaf in a piece of stocking, so you secure the leaf. I make the Easter bread, which is made out of flour, eggs, butter, some aromatic baharika - spices. Some people just make a round thing and they put an egg in it, but I still do the traditional way. There are different ways of doing them. I think my mum used to do the best in the village. If you want to offer a lady an Easter bread, it has to be round, with a cross over it. And if you offer one to a man it's like a horseshoe. And my mum used to make for the children, the fish. The fish is symbolic too, because fish is an ancient Greek word, and if you take every single letter it makes ΙΧΘΥΣ which means "Jesus Christ the Son of God, the saviour". And we couldn't wait. Mum used to make one for each one for us. And we used to keep one to eat fifty days after Easter, because that's when the Holy Spirit came to the Apostles. It would go very dry, but we put it in water and make it soft. And we still do that for the godchildren. Every godfather or godmother must take a candle and a tsouriki and another present to the godchild every Easter, so that child would take the candle to light in the church. We light a candle here and we bring the Holy Light from the church. You have to do a cross on the top of the door when you come home with that candle, you know, just a sign. In some houses you can see a black cross from the smoke of the candles. And the next day we have lamb on the spit and salads.

Children from the Nestoras School with Greek Easter bread

Although Con and Toula have been back to Greece, Australia is now their home. They became Australian citizens as soon as they were able. Nevertheless they will always identify with and cherish their Greek heritage.

Con:

I've been only twice and the first time I went it was after twenty-two years. I found a lot of things different in Greece since I left Greece in 1974. Yes, a lot of things. Many things have been changed to the better. But I think the people have changed to the worse, especially the kids. The kids don't have the respect to the oldest people as we used to have in those days when we were young. The Greek kids here are much better than the kids in Greece, as I found it. When we came to Australia we brought with us all the traditions and the values we had about the family, and we transferred those values to our kids. Our kids are much better than the kids in Greece now. We keep our kids in the family, and they respect the family. Most of the big families I know - the students we have - are educated kids. All of them have been to the university and got good positions.

Well after twenty-six years in Australia we feel Australian. Australian mostly yes. A lot of things - things we see happening around us every day, things which Australians achieve everywhere, we are proud of it, yes, as also we are proud of the achievements of the Greeks.

Toula:

I always wanted to go back. But now we don't want to go and live there, because we're used to here, we're Australians now, Greek and Australians. We're not either but that doesn't make us less Greek or less Australian. When we go to Greece they call us Australians and when we are here they call us Greeks. I love my country dearly, but I prefer to live in Australia. And I think Australia is the country that gives us jobs, our house is here, our business is here. So if you love your first country, all this emotion goes with you in another country. I love Greece, but I'm here now and all the things that make me love Greece, they make me love Australia too.

Anice & Nagat Morsy

“We shifted from shish kebab to barbecue”

Anice and Nagat Morsy relaxing at home in Doncaster

Since they migrated to Australia from Egypt in 1969, Dr Anice Morsy, and his Lebanese wife, Nagat, have been actively involved in Australia's Arab community and in fostering a better understanding of Arab culture in Australia. They settled in Doncaster in 1976.

Nagat, a journalist, pursued her career in Australia with the Arabic Ethnic Press. She has also written and published a number of books in Arabic, including The Arab Migrants in Australia, for which she received the Kahlil Gibran Literary Award in 1990. Although from a well-to-do family, Nagat and her sisters had to overcome the lack of education available for girls in Lebanon. Perhaps this experience influenced the high value she gives to education and her commitment to the Arab women's movement. Nagat was a co-founder of the Australian Arab Women's Association in 1973, and the founder of the Arab Women Solidarity Association in 1986. She has represented Australian Arab women at a number of overseas conferences. Although now retired from journalism Nagat continues her writing and her involvement with the Lebanese and Arabic community.

Nagat begins her story:

I was born in Lebanon, in the Middle East and Mediterranean. I was born in the south, but we were living in Beirut since 1950. My family – I start with my elder sister, who was self-educated. There was no education for girls at that time, because she was born in the twenties, and she educated herself and now she is a poet. She has three books published. My father was a landowner. He was a poet as well. And then my mother, she produced a dozen children – six by six. My elder brother was a Professor of Philosophy at the American University in Beirut. Now he is a Visiting Professor in George Washington University in America. Another brother is Doctor of Economics and Politics. One sister is a scientist and another sister is Doctor of English Literature – she is in Canada now. And myself, as I said, there was no real education for girls when I was born in 1933. I had to educate myself until I was able to start studying. At that time we were in the country and I had to leave. I studied journalism. I got a diploma in Journalism from Amman Institute, Jordan. Then I studied English and bookkeeping. The last shot I went to Egypt with UNESCO Institute, and I studied Community Development and I got the diploma. There I met my husband and I stopped studying before I reached the university.

When we came to Australia I didn't find it too different or too strange. I love the green, specifically the parks in the city and the very beautiful birds. My country is green, by the way, very green. I like as well the laws and the way the people are adapted to serve Australia – the ethnic people. When I came to Australia I found it closer to my country Lebanon, because we were coming from Egypt, and Egypt is completely different from my country and traditions. There are plenty of Lebanese here and I found something to write about. I enjoyed it very much really.

In 1973 I started working with the ethnic media – Arabic/Lebanese magazines. We have about eight of them there. I was the Melbourne Editor. And I was correspondent to the other magazines and newspapers, wherever they are in the Arab world. So I covered everything here in Melbourne, everything. Even the Australian Conferences and the Ministers' press conferences. I was put on a mailing list, they sent me any press releases. And conferences – anything Australian/Arabic – I got the invitation, I go there and cover it. If it is Australian I have to record it. I come back home and stay up to midnight to translate it to Arabic. Mostly it is on Sunday, Monday it has to be in the mail to Sydney, and the photos and everything. So I was from 1973 up to 1986 running and writing.

I was at that time co-founder of the Australian Arab Women's Association. Then, after eight years working together, it came the trouble in the Middle East and there was some different feeling between the members, and we had to stop it. We found we had about twenty thousand dollars and we decided to give it to the Children's Hospital in Melbourne. They bought two or three things they needed and they put our name on those things. One of them is the bed, which lifts a disabled person.

Still I had this in my mind – to change the idea of Arab women in Australia, our second country. We have to have another association and to work in English – and to show what we are. So I resigned from the journalism, and formed another association by the name of Arab Women Solidarity Association. Why solidarity? Solidarity with the Australian society, because we want to give the message to the Australian people. From the biased media they don't know much about us. They know the bad face. So we ran the first conference in English at Melbourne University in 1987. It was covered by SBS and it was really a success. It was under the auspices of the ethnic affairs ministry. We had all the speakers. A lady from Asia talked about the women in Asia. Ladies from Lebanon, from Greece – they talked about their own problems. The conference was covered by five ministries in Australia that offer services to women. We had a Lebanese solicitor, we had Lebanese doctors and we tried to cover everything. So this was the first step we show part of our face to our friends in Australia.

We also made an exhibition in Melbourne Town Hall and it was really a success. We collected the work from all the Arab artists. We found that we have a lot of talents. The exhibition was one week in the city and it was visited by hundreds of the Australian public. We invited many ministers and it was a real success. We used to participate in Dandenong festivals, and in any festival. We put our material from all our countries and we exhibited them and the people and schools started coming.

Nagat at Iraqi Women's Federation conference, 1981

But the job in the media gave me a chance to know much about Australia, about my community, about the problems the migrants face. And I found out as well that the Arab migration started in 1860. And since that there's nothing written about the migration. There are a lot of success stories, there is a lot of education not recognised, and they couldn't reach what they wanted. I put the success stories against the failed stories. So I started trying to write something. I didn't find any references – none. I had to start from zero. Still I put in mind that we have to have something written about our migration, about three hundred – four hundred thousand Arabs from all these Arab countries. I felt that something had to be written about it. I did collect as much as I could, and I've written the book The Arab Migrants in Australia – it was 360 pages. It took me three years.

I started writing when I resigned from journalism and the Arab Women Solidarity Association slowed down, and I had a lot of time. I had no children, and I want to use my time properly. I started writing one book after the other – there will be a dozen very soon. The first book was about migration; the second book was for our kids who are about to lose their mother tongue – written in Arabic and English. The third book was short stories about when the migrants came, the first thing they faced, the difficulties, and how it is very hard to get their degrees recognised. Sometimes they put their degrees on the shelves or in the drawer, and they have to do something which does not belong to their education. For this book I was given some money from the Australia Council to publish it. But the other books the Council don't pay, because they don't pay for documentary books. It was a little bit sad because I can say hundreds and hundreds of our degrees, the people are not using them. Our country must make agreement with Australia to recognise our degrees. The universities must make agreements between each other. I know a doctor who was working in a factory. If they know that she is a doctor they would sack her. So she has to deny her degree.

Anice came with the intention of furthering his medical studies. After his qualifications were accepted, Anice was appointed as a Schools Medical Officer for the Victorian Health Department. He remained with the Department for the rest of his medical career, eventually becoming District Health Officer for the Melbourne Metropolitan District. Anice describes his decision to migrate, the initial culture shock, Melbourne's small Arab community, and the move to Doncaster.

I was born in Egypt. My undergraduate was in medicine, in Cairo University. In 1956 I was appointed as a doctor there. I did study community development, where I met my wife. And I loved her on first sight. After our marriage I wanted to further my studies, because once you start studying it's like snowballing, you want to study more and more. I migrated here in 1969. We came here, not for financial reasons but for more studying. I wanted just to further my studies because I have a Diploma of Public Health, so I wanted to have a Master Degree and a PhD. So I sent an application form to America and to Canada and to Australia. The first answer was from Australia when they told me that you have to come to Australia as a migrant. I said, “I don't mind. We can come for a while, if there's a chance for education”. And the gentleman in the embassy said, “Once you are there you can do what you want”. So therefore here we are. My wife agreed to migrate and both of us came to Australia, and no regrets.

We chose Melbourne because we thought that this is the best weather. When we first came here the people are in short sleeves and I was wearing a waistcoat and an overcoat and I was shivering. We knew what they mean by, “You can have four seasons in one day in Melbourne”. But we chose Melbourne just because of our geography. It is the same latitude like Alexandria, which is a summer resort in Egypt, because the weather is much better than Cairo. Cairo itself, the whole city is made of multi-storey buildings, so we live in flats. And when the plane was hovering over Melbourne I found these matchbox houses. I thought, “Oh where's Melbourne?” I thought that Melbourne is, you know, whole tall buildings. I didn't know that Melbourne is only the Golden Mile. We couldn't realise, hovering over Melbourne, that these matchboxes were the houses in the suburbs. Really you can say that it is a cultural shock. Another of the very interesting shocks I had – I was in Swanston Street and I saw a girl and a boy kissing. I thought, “Oh my God, what's happened here, what have we come to in this country? Don't they have a home? This is a private matter, how they can kiss in the street?”

Nagat receiving the Kahlil Gibran Award

The first person to speak to us in Arabic was a milk bar owner, because we went from the hotel to get a snack. I went there and the gentleman saw our list written in Arabic, looking over our shoulder, and he started to speak to us in Arabic. He happened to be a Greek from Egypt. And believe it or not that night we were offered to go to a function where most of the Greeks who come from Egypt met. We had a wonderful night, we saw the people, we found they are very friendly. They tried to find jobs for us, they tried to find accommodation for us. It just happened by accident, but it was very rewarding and it helped us to settle down and relax a bit, because you are tense, you don't know anybody, you just look around. At the time there were not so many Arabic speaking people in Melbourne. But walking down Swanston Street you could find some of these small shops, cafeterias, which are owned by Lebanese who can speak Arabic or speak the same language with a different dialect. There's no Australian language, there's an English language, so there's no Lebanese language or Egyptian language or Syrian language - it's all Arabic but with different dialects.

Anice and Nagat on a visit to Lebanon, 1996

Medicine in Egypt, you study this in English, so I've got no problem in English at all. With the accent everybody says, "I beg your pardon? I can't understand you". This is something that irritates you because you speak the language, but still the people cannot understand you. And even if they answer, you cannot pick a hundred percent of the words. We arrived here on a Friday and I was in the hotel I started to hear the radio - 3UZ and 3AK. I couldn't understand fifty percent of the words. I switched the radio to the ABC and, "Oh, they are speaking English here!" I could understand every word of it, because they don't speak so quickly and they don't speak with the "strine", as you know, and we knew what they were talking about. So we started to be a bit more relaxed that we are in an English-speaking country.

I did work first as a teacher in Sunshine Technical School - I taught for one and a half years. I was teaching science and maths, and it was very, very good experience. Naturally I was not used to the relations between the teacher and the students because in our country, the teacher is like God because he tried to direct you. But here, the relation here is a bit more close and discipline was a bit waning at the time. Now there is no discipline as I understand. But still it was a fact of life and we got used to that fact of life slowly and slowly, without any real shock. After that my qualifications were recognised and I started to work as a School Medical Officer. I've got a Diploma of Public Health and I've got a medical degree - so they accepted me as a School Medical Officer, which I did for quite some time. And I found all the encouragement of my colleagues in the School Medical Service. I find that I'm welcome and, "Just try your best and you'll be OK".

We rented a flat in Albert Park. We didn't know how to own a house - everybody owned a house. We did not know that you can borrow. "Twenty thousand dollars to borrow! How can I pay it back?" The RESI and the banks told us, "If you've got the ten percent deposit you can have your own house and what you pay in instalments can cover the amount of money which you pay for the rent" - which we did. My wife has got very, very expensive taste, so we went to North Balwyn - it was a good house. But the reason for us shifting to Doncaster was that the house didn't have a family room. And after we came to North Balwyn we found that Doncaster is a better place and so we bought a new, more modern house, which is this house. That was in 1976. We wanted to buy a piece of land in George Street. George Street was orchards, they were sub-dividing the land, and this is how we were introduced to Doncaster. And we knew some Lebanese families here. It's very hard to build what we want to build. We went to Jennings and we bought a piece of land down in Bulleen. We wanted to build. We wanted to extend each room one foot or two feet. They ask us for a fortune. Where to go and find some place where it was already built? This was a Jennings display home and the materials are good.

Anice has made a significant contribution to multiculturalism in the Australian community. He co-founded the Australian Egyptian Association, the Arab Information Bureau and the Australasian Middle Eastern Studies Association. He served as Vice-President and Secretary of the Australian Arab Association and as a consultant for the Australian Arab Chamber of Commerce; he has been a Commissioner in the Victorian Ethnic Affairs Commission, a member of the Board of Multicultural Arts and a member of the National Advisory Council on AIDS for Ethnic Education; he has produced and presented ethnic radio and television programs, and has written and published a number of books in Arabic and English. He has used this work to help give Australians a better understanding of Arab culture. Anice discusses some of the features of the Arab culture, and the inevitable changes that occur as migrants adapt to life in Australia.

Extended family, marriage, inter-marriage, all these are traditions which are in-built. We are born and raised that I am responsible for my mother and other children, especially if you are the oldest one. I feel sometimes responsible for the children of my late brother. This is one of the cultural ties of the extended family. It's a bit loose with the younger generation because they are ninety percent Australian, morally. And whatever you tell your child about this tradition he thinks it is archaic, old fashioned, because he spends eight hours a day with his colleagues in the school and he spends with his parents about two hours.

Religion is another part, I'm a Muslim. There's bad publicity about Islam, unfortunately. If you look at the TV the Muslims are assassins - American films - they are not trustworthy, a dagger in your back. These are all misconceptions. What can you do? You have to look after yourself, and show that although you are a Muslim you are not one of these things. This is a very hard, very hard job. Perhaps Islam is a bit hard. The fasting month, Ramadan, how can you explain to the people that you are fasting all day? The normal prayer day is Friday, but Friday is a working day here, so you have to change. And we change it to Sunday. So we pray in the mosque on Sunday, instead of the Friday prayer. Believe it or not I go to the churches more than the mosque, because we are invited to weddings, so we go to church.

I formed the Australian Arab Association, which is the first Arab organisation in Australia, with my friend Doctor Mirza. We found bad publicity and controversy about the Middle East. I did a program on 3CR called Arab Friendship Program. We put Arabic food recipes and five minutes of political segment, some cultural segments - just to introduce the Arab culture to the listeners on 3CR. It was a successful one. I did run this for about four years and then after that I got a little bit involved in too many things and too many organisations, so I thought I'd better slow down, age was catching up.

Now we are involved in Channel 31 on TV. I've got the Egyptian Program and it is all in English because our audience, which we want to capture, is the average Australian, plus our children in the community. Some of them lost their mother tongue, so we thought it better to put it in English so when they go to Egypt they know what's available. So it's dual - for the average Australian and to our children as well. And it's usually tourism - no religion, no politics. I am helping in some other programs on Channel 31 about the Arabs in general. It's called the Al Hadara Club. The word means civilisation, but it doesn't translate exactly and that's why we transliterate the word to mean culture, traditions, customs, religion, so it covers all these aspects. One of the achievements we had - we made a film with an Arab voice-over for the Anti Cancer Council, on the breast cancer self-examination. We show that because sex is a bit taboo, so we cannot hold a seminar with men and women. Therefore we put it on the TV because you have got no quarrel with the TV. If you don't like the program, you switch the TV off. So anyhow it was successful.

We then ran a series of community education. Unfortunately there is no funding - we get from our own pocket. So we had a medical program, molecular medicine, which is the homoeopath, we get a physiotherapist just to get the public familiarised with that sort of service and that line of medicine. Now we are planning something for the GST, which is a horror for anybody, so we want to bring one of the accountants to talk to them. Most of them they can talk bilingual, so they can talk in English and Arabic and we are filming this and putting this on the television. All these things, because now the community is enlarging, and they have got a variety of activities so you want to give them all the ideas, all the rules and regulations here. So it is mainly non-political, but if something happens, like what's happening in the Middle East now, you cannot ignore it. So you just say some few words, not taking sides, but just to give the exact picture of what's happening there. Most of it is in English, so that our point of view is not absent from the average Australian.

Then after that I found that the generation gap in the Arab community is very wide and I found the menace of drugs and AIDS. So I thought the children have got a lot of material in the area about AIDS and drugs, but the fathers or the parents have got no idea. So I wrote a book in Arabic about the drugs and AIDS, and I published it. I actually gave it for free to the churches and to the mosques — to deliver it to the people free of charge, so that they can at least educate themselves and have a better way of communication with their children. This was the first book in any ethnic language about drugs and AIDS. It was launched by the then Minister of Immigration. And it was a very good book. It has got very good publicity.

Migration is transplanting something. Which means that if you have a plant you take off its roots and you plant it somewhere else. A different environment in the roots, different environment in the air, different environment everywhere. Success of migration is twofold. You see, it depends on the plant itself, and the welcoming ground. I felt Australia is a welcoming ground — bar some of the sort of bad publicity which we had at the time. But as I told you there are no regrets because we were open at the time to the whole world, so we came here to Australia. You change, even if you don't want to change, you change. You have to change. When we went back about ten years later, we found that even the people there have changed and we have changed.

Nagat also reflects on the migrant experience. Although she loves her Lebanese heritage and is deeply involved with the Arab community, she now has a strong sense of belonging in Australia. Her kitchen symbolises the blending of cultures from her stay in Egypt, where there were many communities from Mediterranean Europe. It also symbolises her life in multicultural Australia.

You know it's very hard, very, very hard, especially when we were grown up there, when we came here, to wipe our culture completely. We love Australia and we have loyalty to Australia, but still in our back mind there is something we love and we cannot forget, especially if our family is still there. Now, after we're retired, we are able to go every second year. We stay some months between them and we come back after we renew, refresh our feelings towards them. They keep saying, "Come over, you are retired now, why are you staying there?" We cannot because the last part of our life we spent here — we get used to it and we cannot give it up.

I have an international kitchen. I cook whatever I like. I have sometimes Egyptian food, sometimes Lebanese, sometimes Australian. We have some recipes from Greece, because we have a lot in common. We are Mediterranean, most of us. France and Italy and Greece and Lebanon and Malta — all are Mediterranean and they are very much the same. But Lebanon's a little different because they concentrate more on vegetables. They don't make rich food like the others. We use olive oil mostly and vegetable mostly and then we eat a grill, the barbecue. I like shish kebab, and here we love the barbecue. We shifted from shish kebab to barbecue.

Cissy Chung

"I'm very proud to achieve teaching Chinese"

Cissy Chung outside the Athenaeum Hall, with a sword used in T'ai Chi

In 1971 Cissy Chung gave up her teaching career in Hong Kong to follow her husband to Australia. They settled in Bulleen in 1977. In order to establish her teaching career in Australia, Cissy had to overcome several obstacles. Her teaching qualifications were not accepted at first, and she had to come to terms with different teaching methods here. She also had to overcome some prejudice as an Asian migrant trying to maintain her culture in the early 1970s. A consequence of the new policy of multiculturalism adopted by the Australian Government in the late 1970s was that primary schools were funded to teach languages brought to Australia by migrants from many nations. In 1984 Cissy suddenly found herself in demand as a teacher of Chinese.

Since her retirement in 1995 Cissy, and her husband Andrew, have moved to a city apartment, to be closer to their son and grandson. Cissy is now a volunteer with the new Melbourne Museum.

Cissy's story is about how she has maintained her Chinese culture while becoming an Australian.

In Hong Kong we had a knitting factory. My parents worked very hard and it was quite a big factory. We had more than a hundred workers. It was a very good living because we could employ helpers to look after us. We had eight brothers and sisters. When we were young every child had one helper as a nanny. We still have one nanny, she's almost ninety years old. We still look after her but she has to live in an old people's home. We pay for her living.

I started teaching in 1955. In Hong Kong when I went to the teachers' training college, I had to choose one subject as my main subject. All graduates were expected to teach as a classroom teacher. So in Hong Kong I taught as a classroom teacher, I specialised in grade one children, and also taught art and craft. In Hong Kong a government school is very difficult to get into. Fortunately I got in. I became the Vice-Principal, because I'd been teaching there for fourteen years. In the evening I studied in the Higher Chinese Studies. I got a degree from the Hong Kong University. So I got a promotion. I got a very good position in the school.

As a teenager Cissy had a boyfriend who spent a few years in Australia with his father and Australian step-mother. He returned to Hong Kong and the couple were married in 1962. Their son was born a few years later. In 1968 they applied for a visa to come to Australia, but when it was eventually granted in 1970, Andrew had to come alone, because Cissy wanted to stay to look after her sick mother. Cissy joined her husband in Australia in 1971. She tells of her first impressions, her homesickness, and comments on the way Melbourne has changed since her arrival.

I told my eldest sister, "I don't want to come, I want to stay in Hong Kong". But she encouraged me with a Chinese saying, "When you marry a chicken, you must follow a chicken." My son was only four years old and if I did not come then the family would fall apart. My son needed a father. That's why I had to give up my teaching and come over here and start my new life. When I left my mum I don't know when I would see her again. About two years later my mum passed away. I didn't see her again until I went back to her funeral.

The Chinese Consul presenting an award from the Myer Foundation to Cissy and two students

Children celebrating the Chinese New Year

For the first two years when I came I always missed Hong Kong. I missed my family, my brothers and sisters, my colleagues, my friends, the food, the customs we have in Hong Kong. I said to my sister "I want to hear some Chinese voices, can you send me some song tapes?" I wanted to read a Chinese newspaper, so they had to send it from overseas. When I wanted to see Chinese people I had to go to Little Bourke Street. I found the city very quiet during Sunday, all the shops closed, not many people walking around. So I felt lonely. But Australia is very clean, very quiet and the people very polite. You know, when they accidentally step on you, they say, "Oh sorry". The air is clean. In Hong Kong when you go out, your hair gets very dirty. But here, sometimes even one week, you do not need to wash your hair. That's why I like it here. When I was on the plane before landing I saw the houses, they are not so close. Not like a block. And they have red roof tiles. It's so beautiful, just like a picture. Very broad, nothing squashing. Made me feel very comfortable.

Cissy (second from right) with her husband and friends outside her Bulleen home, 1978

You must have some time to adapt yourself, because the environment and everything is different. The first couple of years you still want to go back, but after five years, you go back, you don't want to go again. I cannot go back to Hong Kong now. It's OK just for a short time. If it's too long you just don't feel comfortable. Too many people, not enough fresh air, too dirty. Now I don't miss it that much, because I can eat Chinese food in the restaurant here – it's very good food. I consider those who came recently are very lucky, they get whatever they want to eat. And now Melbourne offers such a lot of variety in the shops, they open seven days a week.

We are four sisters – all teachers. One migrated to London, one went to Canada, only one sister is now in Hong Kong. We're all born in Hong Kong. We got used to the British government. And we heard how people were treated in China. We've heard that people have gone through lots of hardships and they found it difficult to make a decent living even if you try very hard. When we left the country we had to sell all our things. We haven't got anything left behind.

We went to Bulleen because friends came before us, and we needed some support. They suggested we come over to Bulleen – eastern suburbs. We were living in Preston. They said, "Preston is an old area, you should move to Bulleen". That land was rural land before – farmland, belonged to one lady called Mrs White. She divided the land into house blocks. So we bought the corner one and after a couple of years we built a house on it. So 1977, when we finished building the house, we moved in. At that time no freeway yet. Eight miles from the city. It's very close to the city, that's why we chose Bulleen. And not long after, you can't believe it, the whole area was full of houses. Then after the freeway was built, it's even better. So we were living there for more than twenty years. When we moved there were only two Chinese families. One is our friend, just next door to us, and the other one is my friend's friend, up the hill. Only two Chinese families we know. After, many more arrived, we don't know them all. I was so busy teaching, I didn't have time to go socialising.

Before, when I took my son to school, his teachers said to take only a lunchbox in a bag – no schoolbook, no textbook. Then from the window I watched how the teachers teach the student. And then I saw the teaching is different from in Hong Kong. Sometimes I would go into the classroom and help the teacher and then I learnt more. When the teacher interviewed parents I asked the teacher why my son hasn't got any homework to do. I told her I was a teacher in Hong Kong, the student always got homework. She said, "Where are you now?" I said, "In Australia". "Then you have to accept our policy – OK?" And she said, "Don't teach your son anything at home. You talk English at home with your son." I said, "Why? I want my son to keep Chinese language. I have to talk Chinese to him". She said, "You haven't got a chance to talk English at all". I wanted to speak Chinese to my son. I think to keep the culture is very important. I don't want my son to lose our culture.

When Cissy wanted to take up her teaching career she found that the Victorian Education Department did not recognise her qualifications. Cissy eventually found work during the teacher shortage of the 1970s.

They said, “You come from Hong Kong, we do not recognise your qualifications”. After two years the Department sent me another letter. They said, “Now we recognise your qualifications, you can start looking to register”. The principal at Bulleen Primary School said, “You want to register? I will ask an inspector to come to see you teaching”. I said to the principal, “My special subject is art and craft, can you let me have the time to teach children art and craft lessons?” So the inspector watched me teach the children and said, “All right you pass”. Then for the first time, the school called me, quarter past eight, asking me “Can you come to our school?” And the principal brought me to the classroom and told the students, “Today is Mrs Chung come to replace so and so. If Mrs Chung tells me you are naughty then you will get in trouble. I don't want any report from Mrs Chung. You understand?” Some students asked me, “Mrs Chung, when did you come to Australia?” I said “How old are you?” “I'm ten”. “Oh you are ten, you understand my English?” “Yes”. “Oh, you're very clever. Look I tell you I come from Hong Kong, my English is learned from Hong Kong. You know English – every country they have their accent. My accent is from Hong Kong. If you understand me, that means one day someone will talk English to you, not Australian, or maybe the people come from America or England, then you understand. Oh you are terrific.” Then they tried, they tried very hard to understand what I'm talking. And from time to time I go back to their school, the principal says, “Oh you are very responsible for the students”. And I've been emergency teacher for seven years until end of 1982.

My sister gave an air ticket to my son to go back to Hong Kong to visit. And I said, “I should go with my son”. When I went back to Hong Kong I saw all my colleagues, they said, “Now in Hong Kong we need teachers, where is your certificate?” Then I took the certificate back to Hong Kong, within two weeks time I start teaching. It was an emergency teaching job. But Hong Kong emergency teaching is not like here – only one day – they offer a whole month to twelve months. I went back to Hong Kong for one year in 1983. Then I got a telegram from the Victorian Education Department. They said, “We have started the Chinese program. You are the suitable person. You come.” So I came back. I would have come back because my husband is still here, my son's still here. I just wanted to go back to Hong Kong to be a teacher again.

I came back and I prepared all the things, there was no teaching material. I had to go to in-service. I always had in-service with different language teachers working together to write the material in English, and I had to translate it into Chinese. I first came to Richmond North Primary School. I taught there for two years, and then Richmond West for two years. At Richmond North we had a two languages program. One was Greek, one was Chinese – Mandarin. The Greek children must choose Greek, the Chinese children must choose Chinese. All other children, whether they are Italian or Turkish or Australian, whatever, they could choose either language. Chinese children are encouraged to learn more Chinese. The Chinese students if they just come from China or come from Hong Kong or Vietnam – Chinese background – they still speak Chinese. But local born Chinese, they don't speak Chinese. So when they come to me they rather use English instead of Chinese. So Chinese is not easy for them to learn. It's still a struggle, a very big struggle.

When I went to the Chinese Baptist Church in Kew they started a Chinese school, Saturday school. When they first started they only got sixty students. After two years I became the principal and I used the Balwyn Primary School. With the help of some experienced teachers the numbers increased to almost three hundred students. We had qualified teachers, from overseas, and I asked them to watch me how to teach, use the same method as teachers do locally. If you use the method in Hong Kong or in Taiwan the students will lose interest.

Cissy likes to maintain her Chinese traditions with her friends. She expresses pride in both her Chinese heritage and her Australian citizenship.

We do have a few friends and we get together in Chinese New Year and Christmas. For Chinese New Year celebration, normally we have relatives. Now I only have one son and daughter-in-law. We have a banquet meal maybe New Year's Eve, that's it. In Hong Kong we bring a basket of fruit. But here we seldom see people give you a bag of oranges when you come to visit. The Chinese people, when they visit friends or relatives they still give them fruit. In Hong Kong fruit is almost a luxury. Hong Kong doesn't grow anything at all. Moon Festival is very important too. Actually some of the Chinese people they don't know the history of the Moon Festival, so at school I teach the children all the festivals. So here we have moon cake. Dragon Boat Festival we have dumpling. That's got a story too. Christmas we celebrate because we are Christians.

Cissy in her line dancing class at the Chinese Senior Citizens Club

In 1972 because we were going to a Chinese church we made friends. We have some special functions, so we get together. In the Uniting Church in Little Bourke Street we know a few families. They migrated to Australia, they had children too. So eight families got together every month. Whenever the children get married we are always invited. Now after living in Bulleen so long, our friends get together sometimes in Bulleen or Doncaster Shoppingtown. I like to go there and then sometimes our friends bring their children. Some of them marry Australians, then they bring them too. Sometimes we have a barbecue – go to the park. We have a Chinese community. The Australians come too. They love to mix with us. I have a few Australian friends. One is a barrister, his wife is a solicitor. They came to say hello to us, so we became friends.

When my son got married he was living in the city. Two years later they had a child, and they said, “We need someone to help us look after the baby”. We have already retired, we love our son very much, so because of that we think we should we sell our house and go to the city to live. I've got a lot of friends in Bulleen. That's why every Wednesday – I told my son, “You have to put your son in a creche”. I go to the Manningham Senior Club. Before I joined the club, when I was a teacher, I knew some friends there. They said, “We have Moon Festival celebration, can you teach some children dancing, lion dance, all these things, then come to perform?” I brought children there and they performed in the Club. They were children from Richmond. Some parents came too. They were very impressed that their children came to perform in the Chinese society. I'm very proud to achieve teaching Chinese. Some people still ask me to go to do some more, but I feel, because I'm retired, I should give more attention to my grandson and let him have a happy time when he is young.

I'm very proud to become Australian, especially when I see the Olympic Games. When I watch the games with Australia competing with the other countries I am always on Australia's side. But as a Chinese I'm proud to see Chinese winning too. We belong to two countries. Now as Chinese you don't know how we feel when people look down on us, even though we are already Australian. Of course if we go to China we don't want people to look down on Australia. We are Australian citizens. Some people, I know, cannot accept the Asians. Sometimes when we drive I come across people they do not accept the Asians. They say, "Go back to your country".

The other day we had celebration in the Town Hall and we stood up and sang our Australian Anthem. Because I know the words, I sang straight away. Some people just stood there. I said to my husband follow me to sing these words. When I was at school, every Monday we had to teach the children to sing the national anthem — Advance Australia Fair. I translated it into Chinese and I taught the children to sing it in Chinese as well.

Cissy Chung serving lunch at the Chinese Senior Citizens Club at the Athenaeum Hall, Doncaster

Agostino Martini

“... only the hands to work”

Agostino Martini with the gondola outside the Veneto Club

Agostino Martini was born in Italy in 1930. In 1951 he came to Australia in search of work, intending to stay only long enough to make some money. He established a concreting business in Fairfield, married and raised a family, and just stayed on. He moved to Bulleen in 1980, to be closer to the Veneto Club, of which he is an early member. Agostino joined the Club's committee in 1972 and was president from 1990 to 2000. As a concreting contractor, Agostino gave much of his time to help with the construction of the Club's building, which was opened in 1973. He also helped with subsequent extensions and sporting facilities. Now retired, Agostino spends much of his time at the Club. Agostino is a keen bocce player, and was Australian Champion in 1972.

I was born in the Province of Vicenza, in Northern Italy. I lost my father in 1940. When I was young he used to be a carrier — horse carrier. After he died I did a little bit of farming — a couple of acres of farm — and I worked for a living. After the war I couldn't find any other job, and I decided to go to Australia to make a little bit of money to go back and to buy a nice house, to marry. I was only coming to Australia for about two or three years, four years — and I'm still here. In Italy they said, "Oh Australia is no good", because of six o'clock closing. I said, "Don't worry about that, I need money". I brought with me only the hands to work. I worked hard, that's all. I worked hard. I came here only for making money. I wanted to go back, that is the idea. I told my mother, "I'm coming back in four or five years". And she died and I never saw her again.

Being a migrant was very hard, very hard, very hard. But I've got no other choice. I'm twenty years old, no chance to get a job because there's no job around. So it was my idea to go away, to come home with a couple of thousand pounds and to buy the house. But everyone you ask, he came here only for a few years, and after one year, two years, three years, you're going to stay here. When I came to Australia I never had any more trouble with the money. When I want a car, I buy. When I want a house, I buy the house. I've got my own house, everything, yes. After 1954 I buy a house in Fairfield and I started a business there. I married here after seven years, and I said, "That's it".

I had an uncle and auntie here. I worked with my uncle, a concrete contractor, I learn and I carry on the same. And my young brother came here and after that I started working by myself me and my brother. We worked hard, you know, and a little bit of luck. I never built up my business — only about fifteen people, twenty people at the most, enough to make a few dollars. All the concrete floors, foundations for factories, shopping centres, a lot of shopping centres.

I've got one girl, one boy — both have a degree. My son is an accountant, and I said, "Do you want my business?" He said "Oh too hard". He's got a family, do all right. He's better than me because he's gone to school till twenty-four years old. I only go to school till ten years old, and after that I got to go to work for a living. In 1990 I decided, “I'm sixty years old, I've got enough. Now I will retire”. But I'll always be busy down the Club.

In 1968 Agostino heard about the new Veneto Club that had recently been formed by a group of people from the Veneto region of Italy. The main activity of the Club was bocce, the traditional Italian bowls game. The Club bought land in Bulleen and established temporary premises known as the baracca.

I started playing bocce with the Club. And I won the Australian Champion. The Club, they said, “We've got a champion here, very good”. In the meantime we buy the land and at the back of the baracca and we make a couple of lines and we play bocce. They built up about eight courts in the back, near the river. On a Sunday we go down and we play bocce. I won the Australian Championship in 1972. In 1975 I go to Italy to World Champion. I finished eighth, ninth, tenth – I don't know. In 1979 the World Championships came to the Veneto Club.

In 1969 we buy the land at Bulleen. The Committee decided to buy there because you have sixteen acres of land, nice spot, you can do a lot of things. But there were big troubles because it is a flood area – in the beginning. But the Club has been built higher so flood does not reach there. But at that time it was a little bit hard to get a permit. Mr Barro got a permit. And you'll never get any better place, because you've got a nice view, nice area. And there are not many other places you could get near the city with sixteen acres of land. You can go a long way out. When they buy the land there to build the Club there were no houses around here. A lot of members come up here and built their houses. A lot of people live on this side of town you know. There's about two thousand members, I think it is about eight hundred live in Bulleen, Templestowe and Doncaster. Others live in Northcote and Fairfield.

A lot of Italians came here to Bulleen before the Club, you know. I know a lot of families came here in 1950, 1951, 1952. They worked in the brick factory there. My brother-in-law came from Italy to work in the brick factory, because he worked in bricks in Italy too. I know about twenty families who came out to work in this brick factory.

Most of the people when they come out from Italy go to Carlton because there you've got a lot of friends there. But after they move out very quickly. Move out on this side, and up in Northcote and in Preston there is a lot of Italians. People like to come around this way – much better than Fairfield. But, you know, when you live in one place a long time, it's very hard to move. I was travelling to the Club regularly, from Fairfield. By 1980 I came out and lived here, and now I walk to the Club. I came here because it was near to the Club. You never get another good place like Bulleen. It is good, near to the city, near to everywhere, or the freeway, you know. This is the best place. You've got the D'Abruzzo Club up in Epping, but you've got to drive more than half an hour to go there in the night-time. This is more central. This is wonderful to buy the land near to the city like this. I bought the land, I built the house. I have many Italian friends nearby, everybody knows me. They came here for the Club, definitely, like me. The Club is the number one attraction for the Italian people.

I think the Club is good for the Manningham City Council too, you know. I know some people don't like to see the Club alongside the river because it's supposed to be public land. I got big, big, big trouble when I like to do the extension, when I was president. But you never get a good facility nowhere like it is there now for the young people, for the sport – tennis, a gym, everything.

Playing bocce at the Veneto Club

Michael Puljevic

“We all have a different background here ... And that's what makes it Australian”

Michael Puljevic in his lounge room surrounded by beautiful family mementos

Michael Puljevic was born during World War II in the Macedonian Region of the Former Yugoslav Republic, now known as the Republic of Macedonia. His family belonged to an ethnic group known as the Vlachs. In 1959 Michael migrated to Australia with his mother and brother to join his father, who had arrived here as a displaced person in 1950. The family maintained strong links with the local Vlach, Yugoslav and Greek communities.

Michael has worked in a variety of administrative jobs in several companies, and has recently retired from the Human Resources Department of Pivot Ltd. He moved to Templestowe with his wife and family in 1985.

I was born in a small town just outside Bitola in the Republic of Macedonia, known as the Former Republic of Yugoslavia. The village is called Nizepole, with about five hundred residents. It used to be much bigger before the First World War they tell me, and the majority of people are Vlachs, of which I am one. My father and his father prior to that were sheep breeders who were of nomadic people. In winter they would go down to the lower plains of Katerini in Greece, and in summer time they would come up to the mountains of Pelistera, in Nizepole. During the Second World War, my father was a partisan. During a battle with the Germans in the nearby town of Prilep, they were put in the front and of course they were not prepared, they didn't even have proper guns to oppose the German invasion of Yugoslavia. They were bombarded from all sides by the German guns and tanks and they fortunately were able to sustain that and take cover in the mountains and survive, where a lot of their friends died during that battle. This is the story told by my father as it happened. And in the night a group of friends from the same village of Nizepole got together and said, “What are we doing here? We are all going to get killed. We can't fight the Germans”. So they decided they'd run away. They deserted, in other words, because they were going to get killed anyway. Nobody could stop the Germans in those days. So my father left the battle, came to the village. Of course a posse was sent after them to find why these people left. When they discovered that it was the Army Police looking for them, they went over the border into Greece. From Greece they went to Italy in a camp, and from Italy they migrated to Australia as displaced persons. My father came here in Australia in 1950. Of course I was a baby and growing up during the War. We didn't know about my father in those days.

Because my father deserted from the Yugoslav Army, his brother was then caught and jailed, for no reason other than my father's misdoing. Because of that our family – my mother and my brother, and my uncle's family – were all put into exile within Yugoslavia. We were taken from our village and put into a very remote place in Macedonia, and we stayed there for three years.

Michael and his brother Chris with friends, just before leaving Yugoslavia, 1959

And they didn't want to know about us, we were jailed people. We didn't have any rights or anything to do with any other people there. We were being punished. For eight years we didn't know where my father was. About 1948 he wrote to us that he was well and he was in Italy and he was hoping to go to Australia. So it was very hard for my mother. We were children we didn't know any better, but practically my brother and I grew up without a father.

My mother was the only person that could work and provide for us. We were always considered to be from a family which was well off in the past, you know, we were stockbreeders. We did not depend on anyone. But when the communist regime came through they took everything that we had. They took our stock; all our sheep, our cows, horses. They even confiscated our houses so we didn't have anything. Whether my father was there or not, the same thing would have happened. Because a lot of people who had not deserted, who fought in the war — when the communists came, they said, "All right, you've got two houses, you don't need two houses, we'll take this off you". When we came back, our house — which was a double-storey house with four bedrooms — they made it as an office, where the police were residents in the house. We occupied one room of that house, until gradually we picked up the whole house and they moved out.

In 1958 we got the first communication from my father that he was well established in Australia and he wanted us to come over and join him. He had made the permit and everything else, but we were rejected from the Yugoslav State. They wouldn't let us go out, because my father was a deserter. With persistence and going through various high authorities in Yugoslavia, we finally succeeded and were able to migrate to Australia. I was quite happy to go to Australia, to see my father — not knowing what to expect in Australia of course. It was the thirteenth of February 1959 when we came. It was a nice warm day, and there were heaps of people on Station Pier, all waiting. We came through Italy and there were a lot of Italian people, but also Greek people, and the boat was full of multiculture. All we could see was a sea of people all waiting and waving, and bands playing. You know it was great — I was fourteen years old at that point — it was terrific.

They wanted me to continue with the schooling, and I enrolled at Newlands High School. I couldn't speak a word of English of course, nothing. I couldn't even say "thank you", I didn't know what it meant. My uncle lived in Coburg, we lived in Fitzroy. He took me to Coburg and I stayed with him. My first day at school was quite an experience. They took me there, they enrolled me, they gave my name and date of birth, and they took me into the class full of children. Just say, "Oh this is Mihailo" — they used to call me in those days. And of course nobody could pronounce it and they said, "Oh Mick, Mick", so I was known as Mick from there on. The teacher who was taking a class of French happened to be Yugoslav. And she came to me, with a name like Puljevic, and asked me, "Are you Yugoslav?" I said, "yes", quite happy to hear that someone could speak my language. "I'm Yugoslav too." So she started speaking with me, and all the children around me were amazed, "Oh this guy can speak French!" — not realising that she wasn't speaking to me in French, she was speaking in Yugoslav. So anyway she was quite a help to me during the first few days of school.

My uncle's wife was Greek and she continuously spoke to me in Greek. I picked up the Greek language before I could speak the English language. A lot of Vlachs speak Greek, because of their closeness to the Greeks and because they came from that region where Greek was spoken. At the Newlands High School I met with a few Greek boys, and they started talking to me in Greek and I could say "yes, no, thank you", sort of mixed Greek and English, and I learnt Greek in that way.

I did not feel that I was in a strange country. You know, because you're reunited with a father here and a lot of friends, a lot of relatives who gradually started coming into Australia. So we were not isolated in any way. We came from a culture which was totally different, but we did not feel that we could not continue with the culture that we had. We celebrate name days even to this day. You know, if you are named Michael, during St Michael's Day you celebrate. You invite friends over and you put on a dinner and have a party. Easter is very much celebrated with the Greek Easter. Being of Greek Orthodox background, Easter is very important to us. It is the biggest religious event in our lives.

We lived in Fitzroy only for about four years. The traffic was getting too heavy and it was right on the corner of Brunswick Street and Alexandra Parade. I wish I had that property now though! So we decided to move away, go into the suburbia where it's easier to bring up children, that's what my father felt I suppose, we were still fairly young. So we moved into Pascoe Vale.

When we came in Australia, of course very few people played soccer, and as a young boy I could only play soccer, because I didn't know football or cricket. Between 1963 and 1965 quite a few of my friends from overseas, from the same village and the same area that we were from, came into Australia as well. They were sponsored by friends and my father sponsored quite a few of them. So each Sunday we would get together and there was nothing for us to do. We'd go into a park, grab a ball and kick around. We decided to form a team, because we were good players. There weren't many good soccer players in those days, so we thought that we could play soccer and form a team. Myself and another boy, from the same village, took the initiative to form a club — got eleven boys and we registered as the Pascoe Vale Soccer Club. It's still going today.

The Club is basically Vlach because it is managed by Vlach people and created by Vlach people, but there are other people who support the Club as well from that particular region of Yugoslavia, or Macedonia now — and identify with the group and participate in supporting the Club. I was the first president of the soccer club — held the position for about ten years, and then I've been the manager of the club.

Michael as President of the Vlach Association of Australia

Vlach culture is essential to Michael's identity. He explains the origins of the Vlach language. Michael was involved in establishing the Vlach language program on Radio 3ZZZ, of which he is a regular presenter. In Australia the Puljevic family has sought to maintain the culture through traditional marriage customs.

The Vlach language is a Latin based language. The theory is that it is derived from the Roman Empire. Rome conquered the Balkans back in 168 BC, and the Vlachs are remnants of the Roman Empire, people left where they conquered. Those people spoke the Roman language. The Vlach terminology is what other people call us. A Vlach calls himself Aroman — which is basically a Roman. So that is the story, but there are other versions of it. If you asked me today, I would say I am Aroman or a Vlach. If you asked me some ten years ago, I would have said Yugoslav.

Michael playing as goalkeeper for Pascoe Vale, winners of the Yugoslav Cup, 1994

The reason for it is that I came from Yugoslavia, I was born in Yugoslavia, I was raised in Yugoslavia and that's what I identified as. When I came here and, with the breakdown of Yugoslavia, and finding out about my people a little bit more, I know that Yugoslavia identifies with many ethnicities. If you are a Yugoslav you can be a Serbian, a Croatian, a Slovenian, Turkish, Albanian or a Vlach. So that's why we identify today ourselves as Vlachs. There is quite a strong community of Vlachs. The Vlach Association of Australia was formed in 1987, and it has over three thousand people that associate with a Vlach group. I am currently the President of the Vlach Association. There's more and more Vlachs coming to identify themselves as Vlachs, coming up and saying, "I am from Yugoslavia but I'm a Vlach".

3ZZZ is a community broadcasting radio station which broadcasts in 57 languages, and it is a regional radio station. We made an application to the 3ZZZ Council and that was rejected, which disappointed me quite a bit. I said, "Why are you rejecting?" They said, "Where is Vlach? Is there a country - a Vlach country?" So it was a battle to convince the 3ZZZ Council that the Vlach language should be broadcast. We went to a meeting with the Council and I put my views. I said, "Look you're knocking us back because we haven't got a country. Well let me tell you I have a country. I live in Australia, I'm an Australian, but I speak Vlach. The Vlach language is over three thousand years old, it's spoken by so many people, they're all over the Balkan countries, they live everywhere in the world, and one person doesn't have to have a country to have a language. Many other languages that are spoken today have no country because of geographical changes and political changes and whatever. The Kurds haven't got a country, but they speak Kurdish. Just like you live in Australia, you're a Greek. You speak Greek but you are in Australia. I said my country is Australia and I want to speak in Vlach, and you cannot deny me, because if you do deny me that right, I will go to a higher authority and you'll be exposed and you'll probably lose your licence". You know - straight down the track. So we had success. We started the first broadcast I think on the twenty-eighth of September 1995.

The way the Vlachs were able to preserve their language is that they were never mixing with other nationalities. It is traditional that the parents would arrange a marriage, even in some instances before the children were born. If my parents were good friends with another family they'd say, "Your son will be the husband of my daughter". My mother and father went overseas in the early seventies. They were just visiting the old country. They went to Greece, just on the other side of the border from the village I came from. They knew of this village where my father's mother was born, which was pure Vlach. And they met with this family. They met the girls and they said, "Oh this girl I want to take for my son". So when they came back they suggested a wife. Of course I had girlfriends here, I didn't want to hear about sponsoring a girl. They said, "Oh no, no this is a good girl, a beautiful girl, we know the family, everything you like". I said "I've got my own life, I've got a girl here". "No, no, no this is a good girl, this is a family girl." So I said, "All right we'll bring her here and we'll see. If she suits me I will marry her, if not we'll send her back". So Flora came, and she's here. Once she came here we got to know each other. She was hardly eighteen and I was a few years older, but it worked and she became my wife.

My son married a Macedonian girl. Yes, we would have loved him to marry a Vlach, but I suppose we're a little bit softer now, more mellowed and perhaps more assimilated with everyone that we don't feel as hurt as my father would have felt.

Michael explains why he moved to Templestowe in 1985, and describes his multicultural neighbourhood.

Going back twenty years we decided to come to the eastern suburbs. At Pascoe Vale, where we were living we had a fairly modest house - brand new - we purchased it after a few years of arriving in Australia. It was always our intention to have a bigger block of land, and be together with my brother in one area. My brother was living in Glenroy in those days. And through my solicitor, Mr Toohey - we were talking one day and I said, "Oh we're looking for a block of land, where do you think we should buy?" We were looking around Thomastown. There was a new area being developed and a lot of Macedonians from Yugoslav background were moving into that area, and we thought we'd move with the crowd, you know, be together in the same grouping. Mr Toohey looked at me and said, "Oh Michael, Thomastown is always going to be Thomastown, so there'll be a lot of ethnic people, but I think you should move somewhere else". He said, "Move east of the city, east of the Yarra". So I started looking to get a property on this side.

Michael with a Vlach shepherd's crook

One of the agents took us one Saturday afternoon with my brother and we went up Tram Road, which is near the Doncaster Shopping Centre, going towards Box Hill. And there were two blocks of land near a school - quite nice blocks - fairly elevated, looking down on what is today the freeway. Just as well we didn't buy them! The agent then suggested this area here, which was at that point an orchard. It was divided into blocks of land and there was this old house in front of us here. People by the name of Stevens owned this orchard here. The blocks came up for sale and we bought them for twenty-four thousand dollars, which was we thought a bargain at that point - and this is fifteen years ago. We bought adjoining blocks, me and my brother. After four years we started working on plans and built the two houses here now.

We liked Templestowe because we knew that there were nice blocks of land, fairly large sized blocks in the area. It was a new area and there were a lot of new people here. There was always talk that, you know, the higher class of people were moving up in this area, and we wanted to identify with those people, I suppose. I didn't know, when we were purchasing here, who was buying, but I know my neighbours now, and they are all from ethnic backgrounds. They are all well-to-do businessmen. Next door on my right, after my brother, is a solicitor from Italian background. On this side is also another businessman - a small goods manufacturer. From the front of us is a builder. One is Italian, the other one is Italian, the one in front of us is from Greek background. So you can say that we're all Australians from different backgrounds. And there are quite a few Macedonians and Yugoslavs although I don't know many of them. We do meet at the Bulleen Plaza quite often with people that we know. I have two families that I know - we are quite friendly and communicate and also visit each other - we're all from Vlach background, and strangely enough they are from Greece as well. I'm from Yugoslavia and they are from Greece and yet we speak the same language, which is good.

I quite readily accepted the Australian culture for what it is and I'm sure that a lot of Australians accept the culture of other people for what they are. I have not had any difficult experience, that I was called a "wog", or not allowed to go into a bar where Australians were, or anything like that. To me personally it never happened. So I felt quite comfortable everywhere I went here. After a few years in Australia I became a naturalised Australian, so we are Australian Vlachs in other words. With the Olympics, you identify yourself as an Australian, or the World Cup — where Australia participated. We were all Australians barracking for an Australian team. Not for the Yugoslav or the Greek team, but barracking for the Australian, and that makes you feel Australian. We all have a different background here, but when you put them all together and they play for Australia, then you support the Australian team. And that's what makes it Australian.

Deirdre Lenhoff

“… to be a successful migrant you really need to get into working with your community”

Deirdre Lenhoff in her tranquil bush garden in Doncaster East

Deirdre Lenhoff was born and brought up in South Africa's privileged white community, where she trained and practised as an architect. Because of their anti-apartheid views, Deirdre and her husband gave up their comfortable lifestyle, left South Africa and, with their two young children, migrated to Australia. They arrived in 1986 and decided to settle in Manningham. At first Deirdre worked for a firm of project home builders, then began setting up a software business with her husband. However a severe illness resulted in the loss of an eye, the failure of the business and her career as an architect and eventually the break-up of the marriage. When circumstances forced her to become a full-time mother and home-maker, Deirdre discovered her community and the value of community involvement. She has worked with the local council on waste disposal and other environmental matters. For this she was made Manningham Citizen of the Year in 1997. Deirdre now works as part of a sales team for a home building firm.

I was born in Johannesburg in South Africa. My father was a lecturer at the university. My mother was a ballerina and she danced in London. Then she produced five girls, so settled down to bring us up. We lived in a lovely, leafy suburb. We had one cook, one nanny and one full time gardener. So it can only be described as a privileged background. I went to the university and I graduated as an architect. My second sister graduated as a solicitor, and the ones afterwards in Bachelor of Commerce, so we all had professional careers. We all eventually married and had a similar set-up to our parents, where we had servants and didn't have to worry about the housework too much. So I found it quite difficult when I first came here having to do everything.

I always felt that black rights weren't adequately dealt with in any manner of speaking. I was always pro everybody having a vote. The apartheid system was absolutely appalling. I mean judging a person by their skin is just not on. But to boot it was also very cruel. People used to jump off the security building — 49th floor — just to escape police brutality. I objected to the cruelty, I objected to the injustice. I knew that no matter if democracy came or not, people that had been treated unfairly by being given a lesser education, lesser access to jobs, lesser access to decent housing, sewerage, everything — there was no way they would be able to turn and be automatically diplomats and people of education. It would take a long time, but you needed to start — and quickly. Apartheid should never have happened. I thought if I read one more story about brutality it would drive me insane. I'd done as much as I felt I could do. I'd waved banners and placards and done as much as I could do without losing my father his job. I was in the invidious position of having a father who was a Professor of Architecture and a lecturer at the University of Witwatersrand, which is a major university in South Africa. And all lecturers are clearly paid by the government. I was an anti-government activist, which was rather a tricky position to be in. I absolutely despaired that democracy would ever come to South Africa, so in 1986 my family and I decided to migrate to Australia. Three years later Nelson Mandela made it to being President of South Africa, so I kind of left for nothing.

I have strong links with Australia. My grandfather was born in Brisbane and his father was in construction. “Mother England” sent his father to South Africa, to Capetown, to build a bridge, and we became accidental South Africans. My grandfather was a solicitor and he practiced out of a tiny little town called Germiston, near Johannesburg. I also have another link with Australia through my paternal grandmother, whose family was part of the Bendigo/Ballarat gold rush days.

So after I graduated as an architect, I had my own practice in architecture in the tiny town that we lived in. Its name was Welkom, which in Afrikaans means, “welcome”. So essentially I had a bit of both – the “big smoke” and country living. I enjoyed the latter more than the “big smoke”. I had my two children there. It was a successful practice, but by the time I’d decided to migrate in 1986 the economy was in such disrepair that you couldn’t sell a practice even if you wanted to, so I literally closed the door of my practice and left. I had rented my house to a huge conglomerate in South Africa. I thought I’d keep my home just in case I got to Australia and decided, “Oh no, can’t possibly stay”. At that time the government decreed that you weren’t allowed to take anything more than fifty thousand rand. At that stage one dollar was worth two rand. So we essentially came with nothing. We left what we had in South Africa and the intention was to start again here, and see if we really enjoyed living in Australia.

We knew nothing about Melbourne. We found ourselves in Brighton to begin with. I had one friend in Melbourne and I said to her, “Could you please send around an estate agent to sort me out with a house”. And she said, “Well what suburb were you thinking of?” I had no idea that you could drive for four and a half hours and not leave Melbourne. The little town we’d come from you could traverse in twelve minutes, so it never occurred to me that, goodness, you could be as far flung as Frankston to Warrandyte! I think it was just a matter of getting word from other South Africans here that they really enjoyed living in Manningham, and then coming out and having a look and seeing that they were correct, and that we’d probably be happy here too. We initially rented a house in Lower Templestowe, then in Doncaster and then we bought a home in Doncaster, where we lived for ten years. I particularly like a balance of city and country. I’m not a big fan of living in the absolute hub of things, and I thought it was probably better for my children to have special spaces and places in the country to roam around, and parks that were quite special to hunt in, or walk next to the river and also be enormously safe.

My husband had been offered and accepted a job before we migrated, so we knew he’d have a job. I got a job as an architect. My children were four and two at the time. I had to put them into a creche and they hated this creche so much. When you are a professional there is no way you can be a clock-watcher. So eventually the firm got very tired of the fact that I had to leave at quarter to six sharp, every day in order to collect my children by six o’clock, and I had to leave the job. When I left, my husband and I decided that we would pool our skills – he being in information technology and me being in architecture. We combined our skills to create a software that would allow architects to draw on a computer. I was quite amazed in 1986 to find how few architects actually used computers in their practices. Big firms were, but smaller practices weren’t. So we developed up this software package.

We had no sooner set up this business, which was quite stressful on the family and absorbed quite a bit of the money that we were allowed to bring from South Africa, when we went to take a little break in Sydney. Whilst in Sydney I bought a pair of contact lenses, and unbeknown to me, the contact lenses had a fatal germ on them. I popped these things into my eyes, and within forty-eight hours I was at the Royal Eye and Ear Hospital, battling for my life, let alone my business. The problem with pseudomonis is that it is omnipresent – it is in the air, it’s on soap, it’s between us as we speak. The only time that it’s ever harmful is if it gets into your eye, and the only time it’s then harmful is if you scratched your eye and there’s some way that the pseudomonis can penetrate your eye. But when it does, it does a very good job. And if it’s covered with a contact lens, which is like a bandaid and keeps moisture and heat on your eye, it grows furiously. And for reasons that even optometrists don’t know, it’s like a cancer within your eye, and it completely devastates the one eye, then goes into the other eye and then travels into your brain, at which stage you die. I was amazingly lucky to survive that. The Eye and Ear Hospital was absolutely amazing. They hired a sister for me, and me alone. But it was something of a torture going through the treatment. I had to have drops every five minutes and injections into the eye every hour.

Deirdre relaxing in her garden in Doncaster East

By the time I recovered, the business had gone totally down the gurgler, and I resorted to looking after my two children full-time, which in a way, was the bestest thing that ever happened to me. So instead of being a full-time professional I was now a full time mum. And I really got to know my children, which was a pleasure and a privilege beyond words. It was just fantastic.

At that stage Manningham had so much on offer, I found it an absolute pleasure for myself as well as the children to investigate and find out about many, many types of things. We went to teddy bear picnics at the library, we went to possum prowls at Westerfolds Park, we did the Halloween thing by ourselves and at the library. There was so much going. In my diary I wrote in red what the children and I did on a daily basis. I was able to find three things every day to do that cost me not a cent, and were absolutely enthralling to my children. We belonged to the local book club. We really used the library a lot, because at that stage the library used to organise many different functions, depending upon what time of the year it was. Also the rangers at the parks were really, really excellent and many, many things happened at Currawong and Westerfolds and just about all over. My children and I became really incredibly close and it was just a very special time. I got to know the area like the back of my hand, and I got to know my children, which was really marvellous.

I guess that I did have a couple of hours of boredom, because at that stage I saw in the local newspaper an advert for the then Doncaster and Templestowe Council calling for recycling co-ordinators. I had no idea what a recycling co-ordinator was but I stuck up my hand. And I was the only one of sixty thousand readers, so I got the job. It was a voluntary job. It was an initiative of the Doncaster and Templestowe Council, a trial run of fledgling recycling. As we went through the program though, I began to realise why I’d been the only one that had stuck my hand up. It was very difficult. So I rewrote it, and between the Council members I was working with at Economic and Environmental Planning, we presented it to the new Manningham City Council. The Council liked it that much that they adopted this program called Kerbwaste as their official recycling program. And for my efforts I was Manningham Citizen of the Year in 1997.

I can’t say that I could take the entire credit for it. I mean all the bones were there, it just needed finessing. I guess finessing from the point of view of being a user, a mother, a householder, a professional person, so I could put in many different ideas. And the whole program started to work really, really well. The essential part about Kerbwaste is that it was the precursor to recycling. It was getting the community ready to recycle. So it was what we called a community change program, and it involved heaps of volunteers at different levels. It did its job. To a large extent I think Manningham-siders are so into recycling that all they need now is a refresher or a booster at stages when contamination becomes too great. But most of us are so used to recycling it's like second nature now. So I guess Kerbwaste did a lot to help the community into recycling mode.

At this stage in 2001, Manningham has progressed to be one of the most sophisticated and diligent councils worldwide, as far as I know. We now have a three-bin system. The last I read is that Manningham has been very successful at reducing its landfill rates, due to this three-bin system. Many municipalities are watching closely to see how it goes on from here, as to whether they adopt the same system. I'm no longer involved, because the recycling process has grown up and it runs by itself. But after that I did work on many environmental projects - some paid, some voluntary - through the Manningham City Council.

In all my dealings with the Manningham City Council, and especially with Economic and Environmental Planning, our belief system has been to stick to what the Rio Summit Agenda for the Twenty-First Century came up with. That is for Council and community to work as one for the benefit of the entire community. So the Council doesn't make laws and then just tell people to stick to them. It's Council via a catalyst - I guess that's what my role has been. Being informed about what will work and what people want, then making policy, putting it forth for comment from the community and then enforcing it. So the Agenda for the Twenty-First Century said that essentially if you don't have Council and community working together no policy will ever really take off, let alone be successful.

Now I work with Council on special projects. I've even been known to get sponsorship for our local adventure playground. Economic and Environmental Planning decided they needed extra funding for the adventure playground. It was to be a regional playground, so it was accessible to children from outside of Manningham. The way we curried extra sponsorship was to sell bricks to corporate citizens for a thousand dollars a brick, and we used that money to create the adventure playground. The corporate citizen could have their logo and a very tiny amount of verbiage embodied in a design through the whole adventure playground. So you'll find when Strapp Ford's corporate head honcho takes his children down to the adventure playground, his children can see that dad has actually contributed to the adventure playground. Not only does he have a business in Manningham, that I'm quite sure he profits from, but he's given back to the community. So once again we brought the community and the Council together all working for a regional adventure playground that has become a star jewel in Manningham.

Manningham Citizen of the Year Award, 1997

I recall way back when I worked at the Johannesburg City Council, when I was a newly graduated architect, we worked on a program called the Crocodile Ramble. This involved creating a tourist trail from Johannesburg, through the bush and looping back towards Johannesburg. Furriers, restaurateurs, artists, glass makers and all manner of craftsmen, would be visited on the weekend by jaded, big-smoke people who wanted to escape. And craftsmen on the Crocodile Ramble became extremely successful because of this creation. Johannesburgers loved this Crocodile Ramble so much that eighteen years down the track it's still one of South Africa's most successful tourist trails. I suggested to the Manningham City Council that they create a Yarra Ramble a very long time ago. I guess the idea led in part to what's now known as Yarra Valley of the Arts. You can take a veritable ramble through many little artist studios, candle makers, wineries, restaurants and there's a really lovely pamphlet that you can get from the Manningham City Council, which will show you how to use this tourist trail to your best advantage as a citizen of Manningham, or from anywhere.

I think to be a successful migrant you really need to get into working with your community. Get yourself onto committees. That way you get to be known to the decision-makers. You get to make more friends. You have a say in your city, and you do a lot of interesting things, which lead to other interesting things. The first piece of advice I would give to new Manningham-siders would be to get involved with Council activities, find yourself on a committee and give it a go. We think it's right to commit yourself to community and become part of the community. We made a policy of becoming Australian as fast as possible, we don't believe in ghettos at all. We don't have many South African friends because when we arrived we decided we would "Australianise", and that we would be part of all communities. I think we have succeeded in doing that, but we do have a smattering of South African friends and we do keep up with them. They are very enamoured with Manningham.

Coming with nothing is awfully stressful. It puts great demands on the parents who find themselves in a position where they have to put their children in someone else's care, in order to earn enough money to keep the whole household going. I could write a book about feelings of isolation, distress, distress on behalf of my children and then dealing with those and finding ways to overcome them. Also the negative things that I experienced, having lost my eye. Being so far away from the family, having no way of coping other than just going on, day by day. I remember being in the intensive care isolation ward, because I was now "highly diseased" and having all the nurses around me with masks and gloves and aprons to protect themselves from me, and then waking up to find my daughter on my bed with no protection whatsoever. It was just a matter of necessity. My husband would bring her to the hospital and she'd have to stay with me. We'd just arrived, we had no grandmother to turn to, no aunts, no sisters, no friends nobody who could help in this predicament.

If you'd been born in Africa there's something about Africa that you simply miss forever, that you never, ever lose a feeling for. There's something about Africa that absolutely pulsates through every South African's veins and they never get rid of it. I think it's the bush, it's the specialness of the wild animals. In the cities it's the energy, the absolute energy. You can feel it walking down the pavement; you can feel it in the street. We tend to go back every two years to maintain our relationships with our family. We're the only people that have migrated to Australia, so we have many cousins, sisters, aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces back there. If you go back between two and five years you can keep up some sort of a relationship with them, and also see the changes that are happening - some exciting, some for the worse. Crime is quite alarming. I've been tempted to return but my children are Australian and this is firmly their home, and they would never go back and I wouldn't go without them. We all are Australian citizens.

The adventure playground at Ruffey Lake Park

Sam Chen

“I have my footprints on the five continents. I like Australia better than anywhere”

Sam Chen in his home with Chinese scrolls

Sam Chen was born near Shanghai in the Chinese province of Kiangsu. In 1949, during the communist revolution Sam's family followed the Nationalist Government to Taiwan. With a highly trained academic background, Sam has had a career in the diplomatic service, representing Taiwan in many parts of the world. His last posting was to Australia in 1979, where his mission was to promote bilateral relations in the fields of culture and trade.

Prior to 1972 Australia had recognised the Nationalist Government in Taiwan as the legal government of China. In December 1972 the Australian Government recognised the People's Republic of China as the sole legal government of China. This meant that Taiwan was henceforth regarded as a province of China, and that its government could not have the status of a national government in any official dealings with Australia. Contact with Taiwan for the purposes of trade and culture therefore had to be conducted on an unofficial basis. Sam's first job was to persuade the Australian Government to ease the visa conditions that applied to Taiwanese visitors.

Our family is traditionally a family of scholars and officials of the government. Our great-grandfather was the governor of the Province of Anhui, so that's where it passed down, one generation after another. 1949 was the watershed. That was the year in which the Communists took over the whole Chinese mainland. So, we followed the government to Taiwan. At that time I was about twenty-six or twenty-seven, I already worked in the government. My career for thirty-five years was in the diplomatic circles. Australia was my last post. Before I came to Australia I was the Consul-General in Pusan, South Korea.

Before I present my story, I have to mention the background of the story. As a result of switching recognition of the Republic of China in Taiwan to the People's Republic of China on the Chinese mainland in 1972, the visas issued by the Australian Government to Taiwanese visitors were not stamped in the passport, but on a piece of a paper known as the Authority for Travel to Australia. In addition, as a condition to the visa granted, each visitor from Taiwan was required to sign a sort of declaration sheet, an affidavit. On the declaration sheet there were four items specified to the effect that the visitors concerned must not represent, nor identify themselves with the Government of the Republic of China in Taiwan, and they must not conduct any kind of activities in Australia in the name of the Republic of China and so on. The use of words in that declaration, particularly this word “identify”, were considered a bit too harsh back in Taiwan. It was from this declaration my story originated.

So the story began when I came to work in Australia in 1979 as a “trade promoter”, but with a mission — to get the Australian Government to repeal that declaration. My official title was the Chairman of the Board and Managing Director of the Far East Trading Company. However, everybody knew I was representing Taiwan. With quite a strong team of Federal Parliamentarians behind me, I went to see the person at the China desk and the relevant departmental head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I went to Canberra to see those people, but not in the Ministry. I had to take them out. I spoke with them in a restaurant, because they wouldn't receive me if I went straight to the Ministry. They knew exactly what I was after. Instead of directly coming to the topic, I chose to speak lightly and with a sense of humour, which I believed was the common denominator of Australian and Chinese people. I told them, “When you wanted to kill a person, one fatal bullet was enough. Why do you keep shooting with second, third, and even fourth bullet, when that person was already dead.” Well, they seemed moved. So I continued to say, “The switch of recognition by Australia was the first and the fatal bullet, which had already shot dead one of your traditional friends, Taiwan. The additional enforcement of that document, called the declaration, was tantamount to the second, third, and fourth bullet. Would that be necessary?” Well, it was a week before Christmas 1979, six months after I had talked to them, I received a call from Canberra. “Sam, congratulations, and Merry Christmas. That declaration, we have withdrawn effective January the first 1980.” And that's the end of the story.

I'm really happy that the tree I planted has begun to flourish. In order to meet the daily increasing demand for mutual benefits, Australia and Taiwan finally set up in each capital city a Representative Office, a semi-official body, which I tried to attain year after year, but couldn't succeed. This did not happen until 1993, some fourteen years after I knocked the Australian door open in 1979. The company I ran was in Melbourne. During those painstaking years, I used to question them why would Australia extend official status to PLO while formally recognising Israel, and why would Australia extend official status to the African National Congress, while having formal relations with South Africa, the white regime. Compared to those two political entities, was Taiwan less important? They could hardly answer my questions.

As the Chairman of the Board and Managing Director of the Far East Trading Company, I spent six years, from 1979 to 1985 as “trade promoter” in the way of exploring possibility and potentiality. We issued visas to Australian businessmen. We also conducted trade exhibitions to create trade opportunities and arbitrated trade disputes. The company is no longer existing now. It has been taken over by Taipei's Representative's office in Canberra. A new period of rapprochement has begun.

When I came here, the total bilateral volume was only about eighty millions dollars US. That's very, very minimal. By the time when I left I'm happy it had increased to 1.5 billion dollars US. Now, as I understand, it's about four billion dollars US – in Australian favour always.

When I came to set up my office in Melbourne, I lived in Toorak, just because I got to meet different kinds of personalities including Bill Snedden, at that time the Speaker in Canberra, and Andrew Peacock. So Toorak was the right place. Then I moved to North Balwyn before I moved to Manningham in 1988.

On his retirement in 1987 Sam and his wife Nancy decided to remain in Australia, although their two sons and a daughter and five grandchildren now live overseas. They settled in Templestowe for a number of reasons, including the fact that they had quite a few Chinese friends already living there. Sam is active in the Manningham Chinese Senior Citizens Club, of which he is now the Honorary President. In 1995 he received the Australia Day Award for the Federal seat of Menzies, and he received a Commonwealth Recognition Award for Senior Australians in 2000.

Recognising my little contribution, we were offered permanent residency in 1983. That's why I chose to retire in Melbourne, with my wife, Nancy, and my youngest son, Edwin, who graduated from Melbourne University. We like not only Australia, but Australian people as well. We also admire Australia as a country ruled by law. In the contemporary world not too many countries can better understand the true sense of the rule by law than Australia. That's one of the aspects I like to see in Australia. Most of the time in China, particularly the past, we call it rule by personality, instead of rule by law. Personality keeps changing. If it was a good ruler, people were lucky. If the ruler was not a good one, well – the people would suffer. You see, law is supreme, personality is not. England also passed through this kind of stage – absolute monarchy. Right from the beginning, Australia was a free country. I have my footprints on the five continents. I like Australia better than anywhere. We have everything, we have peace of mind, everything. I like multiculturalism, which is encouraged by Australia, because they respect the cultural background of the people with different kinds of cultures. That makes Australia great.

Templestowe was an apple orchard when I came to live here twelve years ago, except for a few houses. Now new houses have spread all over and not a single apple tree can be seen. That's developing. That's good. People make people, you know. Live more comfortably. This city is rapidly changing as new immigrants keep settling in. I used to say that this is a two-way traffic. On the one hand, the city ought to look after the newly settled immigrants. The latter, however, should always ask themselves how they are going to share this responsibility and make the city even more prosperous.

Chinese Spring Festival Celebrations in Athenaeum Hall

I have been involved with community work ever since I retired. In the first two years I joined Community Aid Abroad. They do relief work throughout the world. I worked there as a volunteer before I joined the Chinese Senior Citizens Club of Doncaster and Templestowe – now it's called Manningham. Our club was established in 1987. I remember it was 1993 when they tried to enlist my service. Of course I was glad because I would do the same work as I did for Community Aid Abroad.

Our club had a burglary – three times, before I joined them, and one while I was in America. When I came back they told me, “Mr. Chen, it's too bad we had another burglary. They just broke in the storeroom door, so easily. Fortunately we have always been insured, it's all right.” I said, “No, this is not the way to go! You have to solve the matter fundamentally. We have to find out why the burglars could get in so easily.” At Athenaeum Hall – where our club meets and the storeroom is located – both the front and the back gate were kept intact while the burglary took place. I went to ask the caretaker of the hall. He told me, “Well, go and ask the City Council. They lease the hall to different kind of people on Fridays. They give out the key, which would not be returned until Monday.” I immediately knew why and how it had happened. At that time I was the Club's Vice-President. So I took the President, the Treasurer and the Secretary to the Council and called on the officer in charge. I told her how it had happened, and that we therefore wished the Council to have the storeroom completely fixed with a new and better locking system. After a few visits and inspections, the Council finally complied with our request and spent about one thousand dollars on the job. It's not that the Council wouldn't care for us, but that in our club, unfortunately, there are not too many people who can easily communicate with outsiders, as handicapped by lack of the English language. Since 1993, no more burglary.

Sam Chen observing his goldfish, which bring luck to the home

The next thing was to get insurance problem settled. I was already elected the President when I came to deal with this matter. As our Club was a non-profit organisation and met only once a week, I was surprised that the Club had to pay an insurance as high as $1300 per annum. So I started to ask other ethnic clubs also using the Athenaeum Hall – the Italian, the Greek – how they paid their insurance. They paid much lower because they had convinced the insurance company that there were no risks of alcohol and drug concerns plus the fact that the club itself was a non-profit organisation. Recognising the same case with our Club, I began to negotiate with the City Council. Finally, they agreed for us to join their insurance and cut the annual cost down to one third of the original. That's the Australian way, you see, you've got to get yourself involved, that's the main thing.

There were some fifty members in the Club to start. During the last thirteen years the membership has increased to ten times as high. We have people of Chinese origin from Hong Kong, from mainland China, from Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, – all residents of the City of Manningham. And I know almost everybody. We have been able to expand the scope of activities, to upgrade the English classes and increase the entertainment and enjoyment. Now we get at least twenty-five students each English class. They feel very keen on studying English.

Sam at home with his Chinese art collection

There are three major celebrations a year according to the Chinese calendar. The most important one is of course the Chinese Lunar New Year. At our celebration in the Athenaeum Hall we have lion dance to open up followed by routine formalities. We have performing artists, and a Cantonese opera is performed. Of course, we cater with traditional Chinese banquet. The public is also invited to share the festive spirit with us. Each year the Mayor would come, and other key councillors, VIPs, including both Federal and State Parliament members.

I'm happy to tell you my nephew Tsebin Tchen is a Senator from Victoria in Canberra, who was elected in the last general elections. So Chen's family is more closely related with Australia. That's my brother's eldest son, he was sent to Australia to study in Sydney in 1957 while my brother was the Consul-General in Tahiti. Since then, he's been staying in Australia. He married and set up a family and moved to Melbourne and he, just like me, loved to get involved with communities.

My brother is the eldest of the family and I am the youngest. We are four brothers, number one, that's Tsebin's father. Number four is me. Both of us worked in the diplomatic service. Both of us retired here in Melbourne. What a small world! He lives in Elwood. But they have less Chinese neighbours in Elwood or Brighton.

The new Chinese immigrants like to stay together. Chinese love to have friends. That's the way of Chinese living. They like to get together. I would say, they never stop coming to Manningham, particularly from Hong Kong. As I understand, the real estate people did put big advertisements overseas, particularly in Hong Kong in order to attract new immigrants. Once one family moved in, then their relatives and friends followed like a snowball rolling. This perhaps explains why this city has a relatively higher percentage of Chinese immigrants from Hong Kong.

Mohsen Afkari

“I found out that Australia values other countries’ traditions and cultures”

Mohsen Afkari teaching at the Iranian Cultural School

At the age of 40 Mohsen Afkari, a successful engineer in Iran, sold his house, packed up his family and migrated to Australia in search of better opportunities for his children. The family settled in Doncaster in 1989. As far as Mohsen's engineering career was concerned, the move was a disappointment, however he has no regrets. He found a new career as a teacher. Although a Muslim, Mohsen teaches at Christian Brothers College St Kilda. He also became involved as a volunteer in the Iranian Cultural School in Doncaster, and is now its Principal. Mohsen's story highlights the way Australia has accepted people from different cultures and religions.

I was born in a big city called Mashhad in the north east of Iran near the border of Afghanistan and Russia. My father had a jewellery shop. My grandfather and great grandfather were jewellers and were working with gold and silver about fifty, a hundred years ago. They had to make everything by hand and they were skilled. Their work was quite nice and very popular.

I was educated in Iran up to my high school level and then I went to England to do my university. I got my degree in 1971 in Mechanical Engineering from Sussex University. Engineering is a job that can get you quite a bit of money. When I finished my degree I was working in the oil company in the south of Iran – that's where the oil is. I was working there for quite a few years before the Revolution, then I went back to my own home town and started doing other engineering work and got my own construction company. I was there for the first ten years of the Revolution. I was not unhappy, we had a good life. My job was good, I was earning quite good money and I had a good house and my children had a good education. But anyway, maybe adventure or looking for something better was the reason that we came to Australia.

I remember when I was in England in the late sixties and early seventies, there were lots of advertising asking for the migrants to go to Australia. So it was in the back of my mind, that is a new place with lots of opportunities. So when I was looking for a place to go, the places that I could apply and get a visa at the time were Canada and Australia. America was out of the question, because we didn't have a good relation between Iran and America. I had a cousin here and he was the one who encouraged us to apply for Australia. Eventually after two years, we managed to get the visa and we came here.

We used to go to Europe and other countries, if not every year, every other year, so we were familiar with the outside of Iran. Life in Europe was very fast and there were all these big cities, big buildings, things like that. What we were really looking for was a country that would be good for living as a family. And that is one of the reasons I chose Melbourne and not Sydney. One of the things which I will never forget was when we were in the aeroplane just before coming down into the airport – we were looking at Melbourne. They were telling us this is Melbourne and we couldn't see any buildings, because they were all hidden between the trees, you know, there was so much greenness in Melbourne. That was a good thing about it. I do prefer to live in a country situation, not in a big city like London or other big cities in Europe, all big buildings or even in the city part in Melbourne. I prefer to be in a bigger house and to have lots of space around me. I've been in Sydney and I've been in Perth – and I've found Melbourne a better place to live with a family.

One of the reasons I chose Melbourne was the weather. I had a chart that was telling us about the weather in different cities. And in Melbourne the temperature was something like two degrees below zero up to thirty degrees, something like that. So I said, “OK that means that the winter is that and the summer is that, that's good compared with the forty degrees below zero and forty degrees above zero in my own country – that sounds like heaven”. But we didn't know that happens in one day, not in one year.

Of course there are other reasons. I wanted to know someone as soon as I got here. My cousin was already here for a year when we came, so he had established and he had quite a few friends. So through him we managed to know other people. He leased a house in my name in Maribyrnong for one year, but about a month after we came here he bought a house in Doncaster. So he moved here and we were left alone there. So after our lease finished we moved to Doncaster, because most of the people we knew were here.

I was hoping to start a good life. It did take me a while because I couldn't find a proper job. I was accepted because I was an engineer and I was told that as soon as I get here I will have no problem to find a job. But when I came here I couldn't find a job. It took me a year and a half before I did manage to get any kind of a job. One of the reasons of course was I was too qualified and too experienced. I had something like seventeen years of engineering behind me and the latest job I had I was in a managerial position in the oil company and I had my own company and all that. And I knew I wouldn't get any job at that level, but I was willing to start even in a lower level, even the lowest one, but it doesn't work that way. They prefer young people to start in the lower rung. I used to go and be interviewed by people, and I knew more than them. There were quite a few jobs that I thought, “This is just what I can do, and do best”. When I went to the interview I suppose that person also found out that he was the one I was supposed to be working under, and maybe he thought that after a couple of years I'll become his boss or something like that. So I did feel that the discrimination was there, not because I was Iranian, but because of my age.

Goodbye party for Mohsen and Mahin before flying to Australia, 1988

Well, I've always been looking to the bright side of everything, but it was not an easy job at that year and a half. We didn't have a proper job, I was working – kind of tutoring with the children and my wife doing a small job. Sometimes if we had no job we used the social security's help, but it was very hard anyway, I can assure you. We could manage barely, really. But I was always hoping that I would get a break and I did get one eventually. I had to leave engineering and go looking for other jobs. Because of my engineering background, I was good in mathematics and physics, so I used the knowledge and went and did a course in Melbourne University for a year to get my Diploma of Education and start teaching. And I've never looked back, because suddenly I found I like teaching and I found I can be a good teacher.

When I was in England and any other country I was in, I found that many people were ignorant of my country, Iran. So when I came to Australia not many people knew where is Iran or even heard about it. Because of the Revolution many people knew more about Ayatollah Khomeini, but they didn't know that he belonged to Iran. I found out that Australia values other countries' traditions and cultures because it is a multicultural country. I thought “OK this is a good opportunity for me, or people like me, to try to make the Australian people know about Iran”.

When I came to Doncaster I was in contact with this Iranian school because of my children. My son was six years old. He had just started his primary school in Iran when we came, so he didn't know how to write or how to read. Of course he could speak. My two daughters had finished a few years of their school.

Mohsen and Mahin Afkari at their wedding, 1972

When I came here and I found out that there is a school in Doncaster, I took them to the school. I didn't want them to lose the language or forget about it. That was how I got involved with the school. The parents were running it voluntarily, so I realised they needed some help and I was willing to help. At the time I was not doing much so I involved myself in this school. And my involvement became too much and now at the moment I'm running the school, and there is too much work to do, but still I am enjoying it. It is all voluntary. So I started teaching there and eventually I became the Principal of the school. I managed to contact the Ethnic Schools Association and became a member, and through it I met a lot of other nationalities, the principals of the other ethnic schools – the Greeks, Italians, or Russians. And I told them about my country, they told me about theirs, we used to invite them to some of our functions. Anywhere I was, I used to present my country, you know, because they know the Persian cats, or the Persian carpet. These are very, very good things that I could start telling them about it, and that way I managed to tell them about the rich culture of Iran.

In 2001 we are actually celebrating the twentieth year of the school. I have 87 students, I've got quite a few students with English backgrounds, because their parents – one of them was Persian, and the other one was Australian. And I have a Chinese student, without any Persian background. This Chinese boy, when he was just born, his parents put him in the care of a Persian family – daycare. And he was there for quite a few years and eventually learned a few Persian words and started speaking even. So his parents said, “OK, why not continue?” So when they found out there is such a school they brought him to our school and he has been there for the last few years, and he's learning the Persian language.

We have got all the classes from grade one up to VCE. I have more teachers and the reason is because we could manage to involve the parents in the school community. I've got in my service more than twenty people who are teaching full-time or part-time. I'm actually the only qualified teacher there and that's why I can teach VCE. The other teachers – some of them have teaching qualifications, from Iran, but they don't have any Australian qualifications. But the majority of them have got some courses here through the Ethnic Schools Association. When the VCE actually started in 1991 there were some languages that were not taught in the schools. So after a few years we managed to persuade the Board of Studies, by providing some documentation and preparing the actual courses for VCE, to accept the Persian language as a VCE subject. There is another school, which belongs to the School of Languages, which in fact belongs to the Government, they are teaching the VCE Persian language. Every year something between forty and fifty students graduate, and they finish their VCE Persian. I have been involved with the Board of Studies as a Chief Assessor and also as State Reviewer for quite a few years.

You can never separate language from culture. Our school's name is Iranian Cultural School so we do value the culture. So when we teach them, we don't only teach them how to speak or how to listen and understand, we also teach them the cultural part of Iran. Culture includes a lot of things - the history, the geography, the tradition, all the feasts and the celebrations. Every year we have to prepare the syllabus and pass it on in English language to the Board of Studies to accept it. I'm the only one who can do it so it's all my job.

Mohsen at Persian New Year Celebrations

One of the main traditions that we have in Iran is our New Year, and our school has kept that tradition for the past twenty years. The Persian New Year starts the first day of Spring in the Northern Hemisphere and that is the twenty-first of March. It is not just a one night tradition, it actually involves about a week before the New Year and it goes on until the thirteenth day of the New Year. It involves a lot of things happening during this time and we do all of it here. On the last Tuesday of the year, when it is sunset and it gets a bit dark, we gather some small fires for the children, so they can jump over the fires and they sing some songs. And the meaning of that song is that fire, "you're pure and healthy - I give you my sickness and you give me your health". In the morning of the New Year, all the children get some new clothes and also they get gifts from parents and relations and close friends. One of the things that we value is our eldest. The first thing they do is they go to the eldest of the family, whether it is in the same house or in another house, to say hello and congratulate the New Year and they get some gifts. One of the important things is, they also go to the people who during the year have had some problem with them and try to solve it. So enemies become friends on that day. And the children learn that, they see that is happening. So it is a good thing. Another thing they do is at the end of the year - every house - they clean it thoroughly, so when they want to compare some cleanness, they said "oh is it the New Year cleaning?"

The celebration goes on for thirteen days. During these thirteen days they grow some kind of green things - they do it from wheat or some other types of seeds, made on a plate. And on the last day they take it outside of the house - they usually go to the countryside and have a picnic - and they throw these green things, so that all the bad things belonging to the previous year have been thrown away and it won't come back to the house.

It has become partially combined with the religion but this is to do with the actual culture and the race of Iran, many, many years ago. But when Islam came to Iran, they mixed it with the culture. But the Islamic, they have got their own tradition - which of course we have because we are a Muslim country - such as the birth date of Mohammed and when he became a prophet. Things like that are also celebrated as an important date. But the main one is the New Year celebration. And there are always lots and lots of sweets during that celebration. And the people, when they go to each others' house sweets and fruits are presented for the children to eat and enjoy. You have sweets when you are happy and the sweetness of the life comes into it.

We always celebrate New Year at home, because I want to teach my children that I do believe it, so they can believe it. The first day of the year, we have got similar to the Christmas. We prepare a table, and on the table we have to use seven items which start with "S", with flowers and fish and a mirror included. Those seven have got some special meanings and all of them are good things. Each one of them is related to something good in life, like health, wealth, a lot of things. In the morning we come and sit down around that table and we have our breakfast. Most of the families I know value these traditions.

I'm a Muslim and my wife and my family are Muslim also. We believe in Mohammed and, well we try to be good Muslims, just by being a good person. The mosques are there for anybody who wants to use it. We don't have to go, it's not compulsory. If you want to pray or if you want to fast or whatever, we can do it at home without any need of going to any of the mosques. I don't go to the mosque but I'm a Muslim. We believe that Christianity is also accepted. Muslim people accept Jesus as a prophet. So when I was looking for a job I applied even to the Catholic school, and this one I was accepted. I was surprised myself. But now that I've been there for five years I realise that it doesn't matter. I mean they are using my expertise in different branches. They have got their own religious teachers. We have got some students who are not even Christians, they are coming from all over the world, with different religions. But of course the basics of the Christianity is there, and personally I have learnt a lot. I even go to the church with school. I sit down there and just use the atmosphere and learn the wisdom of the situation. Sometimes it gets to me. I mean, not that I'm saying that I've changed my religion, but it gets to me that there are people everywhere who are good people and they can do well whether they are Christians or whether they Muslims or anything else. I have learned a lot from them, and I'm sure they might have learned something from me.

I value and still like what I was. At the same time I like what I am. I like to know myself as an Australian and at the same time if I go to Iran, I might think as an Iranian. So that is the good thing about Australia that you can be both of them at the same time. Just as an example - a few years ago a soccer team from Iran came to Australia to play here and I took my son there. I went there just because I like soccer - to watch a good game of soccer between the Australians and Iran, and I was not going to lean toward one of them. There were lots of Australians around me who were swearing at the Iranians and there were lots of Iranians who were shouting and all that, but I enjoyed the game and I didn't really feel any reason to go toward either of them.

I don't think there is anything that I will regret because I came here, I have lost or I had to push away. I've got my religion, I've got my culture, I've got my children. I can teach them, I can even have a school to do that, which is the beauty of this country, and you are free to do so. And I'm glad I did come here. I may not have had that chance, the same situation, if I was elsewhere - these opportunities that I have and my children have.

Mohsen in his class, Iranian Cultural School

Theong & Kim Low

“... when we saw this block of land, I just fell in love with it”

Kim and Theong Low in their architect-designed home

Theong Low first came to Australia as a student in 1973 expecting to return home to work in Malaysia. His story is about the difficulties he experienced as a medical student and young doctor. He married Kim on a return visit to Malaysia and the couple eventually decided to settle in Australia. Theong now has his own general practice in Flemington. Kim and Theong have three children. One of the reasons for their decision to build their house in Donvale in 1993 was because Shaun, their eldest son, is autistic.

Theong is a member of Rotary and is active in ROMAC, a Rotary sponsored organisation that brings children from overseas for specialist medical treatment in Australia.

Theong remembers his student days:

I was born in Malaysia in a town called Kelang. My parents were migrants from China. During the Japanese war they left China because of employment opportunities in Malaysia. When my father arrived in Malaysia they were labourers for a while, carrying things from the ship onto the trucks. They brought my four brothers along, they were very young kids – five, six, seven. I was told that even at that age my brothers had to work, selling ice-creams, herding cows, that sort of thing. You know we were really poor. Later on my father went into business wholesaling vegetables, and then they started a poultry farm and a grocery shop, and from then on we sort of expanded to different things. And each of my brothers had his own business subsequently. I guess, being the youngest in the family, I was lucky. Lucky in the sense that I had a chance to go to high school, and when the time arrived for me to go to university my parents were wealthy enough to send me to Australia.

I was very good at studies at high school. I always topped the school. And in Malaysia after your Cambridge, you have to wait six months before the results get corrected and returned from England. I was doing so well at that stage I just felt bored staying at home. My friend went to Taylors College in Kuala Lumpur. In those days Taylors College catered for students who wanted to go to Victorian universities and colleges. I didn't even know what Taylors College was all about. Two months after I went into Taylors College I realised that, “Gee, I'm going to Australia”. I told my father “I'm going to Australia. Can you afford it?” I think my father nearly died. I am the only person in the family who has a chance to get into tertiary university. So he said OK, and I guess they really tried very hard to support me.

I didn't plan to do medicine for a start. I was never good in biological subjects. I was telling people that when I was a kid I used to faint at the sight of blood. So medicine was not natural to me. What I was good at was the maths and physics subjects. I've always been extremely good with maths. When I was in Taylors College, I spoke to my maths teacher. I said “I want to be a mathematician”. She looked at me and said “What are you going to do when you finish? Do you want to be a teacher? From university the only choice is some sort of teaching in mathematics". I said "No. No way". So I went to see my physics teacher. The same question, the same answer I got. I told her, "But I want to be a nuclear physicist" – "in Malaysia?" Two other courses that I wanted to do were computer programming or electronics engineering. Thirty years ago nobody in Malaysia even understood computers or electronics engineering. One of the conditions that we were allowed to go overseas to study was that we had to choose a course so that when we graduated we could return and work in the country. As a matter of desperation I chose medicine. My argument then was the fact that I'm going to have at least a reasonable earning power. I'm not going to be poor.

When I came to Australia I went straight into university doing medicine. I think it was a huge mistake as far as I was concerned then. I sat in the lecture hall. These teachers don't speak English, they speak Australian. I could never understand what they were saying. And some of the tutors were going like express trains and I just could not understand them. Being here all on your own in those days, you don't have friends. I was brought up spoilt. I had nobody to cook for me or to do my washing, ironing. I had to adjust to everything. And I got really depressed. I really hated medicine all through my university course. It was after graduation, after I got my degree, when I started working, then it started to make sense.

Actually, I got so depressed with medicine during my student days that by the time I got to my final year, I just couldn't go on any more. One day I just woke up and I said, "I've got to take the rest of the year off". I went back to Malaysia – trying to relax and forget about things. I knew Kim there from high school, but when I came to Australia we broke up for the duration. I took a year off and, probably by destiny, we got back together, and we got married. Well, we eloped. My parents were not happy, "You are still a student, you shouldn't be marrying." We just went ahead and got ourselves registered with the Registry and we were legally married but we were not married in the traditional way. We didn't go to a ceremony at all. So she came to Australia with me. And I guess life settled a lot after that. She was a secretary. Luckily she got a job very quickly with an engineering firm in the city. She made pretty good money then I guess. After my graduation – by then my parents already accepted Kim – I told my parents, "We are coming home for my holidays, it would be nice if we can be married in the traditional way". So we did. We just went back for the wedding.

I did my internship at the old Queen Victoria Hospital. That was OK. After the first year I had intended to go back to Malaysia for good, because my student visa expired. Then I got a call from the College of General Practitioners that they wanted me to stay and they wanted to give me a job. So I said, "OK, but I can't stay because I don't have permanent residency". So they helped me to apply for my residency which I got. I got my job. And the second year I did a course in family medicine, thinking that I'm going eventually to become a general practitioner. First three months was OK, second three months was OK, the third three months was a problem.

The third three months was to do with training in a general practice. In those days they had this computer matching system. You put in your priority at a general practice, and the computer matched them. I was actually matched to a practice in Sunshine. I thought, "Oh fantastic, I'm working in the city". This was a very nice practice, because it was one of my first choices, and I was very happy. The only problem was that three weeks before I was supposed to go to work there I got a call from the President of the General Practitioners, "I'm sorry, they didn't want you, because they don't think you can speak good English". I said, "My degree comes from the University of Melbourne. Are you going to tell me that they taught me medicine in Chinese?" He had no answer, he just kept quiet. I said, "You know very well that is blatant discrimination. You are the President of the College, you'd better do something about it, because I could complain to the Anti-Discrimination Board". So I caused a bit of a fuss, and eventually the practice sent me a letter, "We would like to discuss this matter with you". I just threw the letter away. I can't be bothered talking to bigots. And then, because all the choices were taken, I had to go and work in a country town.

Each of those three months we got a report from the supervising doctor. At the end of three months in the country practice the College of the General Practitioners called me up, "Oh we need to discuss this report with you". So I innocently went up there and I looked this report. I nearly died.

The Lows' house during and after construction

My report was so hopeless; I was told that I was so bad. Two out of five, one out of five. I just looked at it and I just kept quiet. The interviewer asked me "Do you want to explain this?" I said "No, why the hell would I want to bother? You guys are running this project, you should know. If you are smart you'd know. You would take this report and compare it to my two previous reports at Moorabbin Hospital and Royal Park Psychiatric Hospital. I know I was very good in those reports, because I sat down with the supervisor and I was given six, seven, out of seven. Can't you look at it and see that there is an anomaly here?" He wasn't happy, he just kept pushing and pushing, so I gave him a few examples of what went wrong. I said, "The day I arrived one of the first things I saw was a little kid with a small wound which had twenty stitches on it". You only need four stitches. You can claim a certain amount for a certain number of stitches, so basically over-servicing. I said, "One other thing is that I've been taught by you guys at university, if somebody comes in with the flu you don't give them antibiotics, so I don't give them antibiotics". His patients didn't like it – complained to the doctor.

Theong believes that he was a victim of racism and gives some more examples of what he put up with as a student in the 1970s. These experiences, however, also made him aware of his own attitudes.

When I was a student we went to Sydney. We were walking around Kings Cross and somebody said, "You bloody Vietnamese, go home!" And when I was a medical student at the Austin Hospital – there is medical students' room up there, and a group of students used to sit down there and discuss studies and things like that. And there was this country boy who I was talking to one day, and he couldn't understand me, so he said, "Can you repeat yourself?" So I repeated myself once – twice – third time. After the third time do you know what he told me? "Can you please speak in English?" I said "Sure, f ... off". He understood that very well and from that day on he respected me a lot. That's fair dinkum. That was exactly what I said. That's my favourite story when it comes to discrimination. I don't think it was intentional discrimination, it was just how he was brought up. I mean if he were really discriminating against me I don't think he would respect me after that, because he would be more angry with me. But just little things like that, we've got to educate you Aussies I guess. Before I came to Australia I used to discriminate against the Indians and Malays, but that's the way I was brought up. We used to think of the Malays as lazy pigs and the Indians – dirty. If I didn't come to Australia to study I would never have understood what I was doing. And that still happens in Malaysia. I was put on the other side of the coin basically, and suddenly I realised, "Gee I was doing that to somebody else. I shouldn't be doing that." That's when I learnt and understood. These days I don't think of the Malays or the Indians the way I used to and I'm glad. I guess the people in this country need to learn that as well.

After all those problems I had with my work, I decided that it was time for me to go back home. So I went back in 1983 with the intention of staying there for good. When I got back I realised that I'd already changed. I'd been in Australia nine years. About one third of my life by then had already been in Australia. I was changed. I guess I didn't get along with a lot of people, and I had a lot of fights with my own family, so I came back. We already had our first son. It was this huge tragedy when we realised that the boy was autistic. By then we already had a house in Greensborough. We came back with nothing, with only our house there. So I had to find a job. Several weeks after I came back this practice in Flemington came up for sale and I bought it. I'm right in the middle of the Ministry of Housing Estate, and I bought the practice from a Vietnamese doctor. So from the beginning there were a lot of Vietnamese patients. Because of the five Chinese dialects that I speak, the majority of my patients are Chinese. They come to see me because I can speak to them directly.

Theong on the balcony inside the family home

When we realised that my son was autistic we went through hell. He was one of the worst cases that lots of people had seen. He was hyper hyperactive. So we were looking for a bigger place. A lot of our friends were living in the Doncaster area, and we started looking in this area. We were actually looking for an established place, but when we saw this block of land, I just fell in love with it. It was on the top of a hill and it was a flat block of land. It is half an acre. I saw it on the Saturday afternoon. I went back to discuss it with my wife and I just had to buy the property. Well it was more than what I could afford, so we couldn't afford to build for two years. So we stayed in Greensborough and I came up here a lot and looked around and decided exactly how I wanted the house. Prior to that, when I was in Malaysia for eighteen months, I was working with the Minister of Health doing hospital planning, so I knew a lot about architecture by then. So I decided how the house was going to be. I had a friend who was an architect who went to the same Rotary club as me. And we talked, “OK you design the house we want”. I wanted a practical modern house – and spacious. The design brief was directed towards my autistic son. We wanted the kitchen as the central point of the house and from the kitchen you can view the rest of the house, including the whole block of land, so that we can keep an eye on him. We built it and we moved in. I think we definitely did the right thing, because the week we moved in my son was a changed boy. He was just so settled when we moved into the house, we couldn't believe it. We always tell ourselves, “If the house had cost us double the price, we should still have gone ahead”. And lots of our friends are here and I guess there are a few Chinese around this area. We were not going to feel as lonely as we were in Greensborough. I didn't want to move any closer to Flemington, because I have an autistic son I want to have a private life. I don't want people to come to my house every weekend. I want to have time for my children.

Another reason for the move to Donvale was to be closer to the special school in Bulleen Heights that Shaun began attending at the age of six. Kim describes the support that the local council has provided for the family and for Shaun, who is now seventeen.

We were immediately referred to the Manningham Council for the disability area. It was quite quickly done. They assessed him and gave us a few hours a week home help. After school he gets picked up from the bus, because I have two other children that I have to pick up from school. They meet him at the bus-stop, take him home, have afternoon tea and then they go out, to the shopping centre, or go for a walk, or do anything that Shaun likes. Basically, you know, he doesn't really have very much interest. As long as he is happy even going for a drive, this is what they will do with him. So services have been really fantastic, especially the first lady introduced to us. She has dealt with autistic children before and I think that's just wonderful, because you just can't get anybody to work with an autistic child without having a little bit of an idea of what they can do and what they can't do. They have a lot of behavioural problems, and this lady has been wonderful. She's worked with us for many, many years. Last year Shaun hit puberty and hormones were raiding his body. It was the most difficult time.

Manningham Family and Youth Services has been wonderful too. They realised that I have a lot of problems and they referred me to Care Connect. We waited nearly eighteen months before we were contacted and somebody came in and gave us extra hours, so that we could go out for weekends. Shaun can have a one to one, because he was getting really difficult. The funding came from Human Services. We had to ask them for more hours, and therefore we were reassessed and got the maximum of five hours. But unfortunately they do not have the staff to cope with Shaun, because he was growing a lot taller and stronger, so now we are also working with the agency outside, but the hours are still funded by the Manningham Services. They have not withdrawn the money but they have withdrawn their carers because they know they can't offer the kind of service for Shaun any more. He has to leave school at the end of the year when he turns eighteen, and at this stage I still don't know where he is going to go. That's a bit of a worry. But I know Manningham will still offer me the five hours.

Theong and Kim by their swimming pool

For Theong and Kim, it was important that they retain their Chinese identity and pass it on to their children. Theong continues:

We tried to bring them up the Chinese way. When they were young I refused to talk to them in English, only in Chinese. So they do speak a bit of Chinese. The only problem is when they start going to school you can't stop them speaking English, so now they don't speak much Chinese. In terms of culture we still live very much in a Chinese way. They look forward to Chinese New Year, because they get those little red packets of money, that we insist on giving them, that is the most important thing. We used to have a party here with a lot of friends for Chinese New Year because we have the biggest place among our friends. We eat rice every day. When my daughter first had pizza, after the pizza she said, “Can we have dinner now?” I said “What do you mean? We just had dinner?” “But there's no rice!” I mean dinner had to have rice when they were young, pizza is not dinner.

The reason I have not taken up Australian citizenship is because I will have to give up my Malaysian citizenship. Malaysia does not allow dual citizenship. So I've got a foot on each country and I don't really want to burn that bridge. But Kim is an Australian. I've experienced so much discrimination, at the back of my mind there's always this fear that one day I'll be kicked out of the country. There's no question, I will stay here if I'm welcome. At the moment I feel welcome, there's no doubt of it at all. I don't feel at home in Malaysia any more. I think I'm more at home here. When I go back on my own I go and stay in a hotel. I don't go home, because I don't feel part of Malaysia. We have changed ourselves. You can't really pinpoint it, we all change. I mean even if we stay in Malaysia, we all change. We just change to adapt to this place.

Once established in practice Theong was able to contribute to the wider community by joining Rotary. He describes the special contribution he has been able to make as a doctor, helping children from Asia/Pacific countries through ROMAC.

When I first started in the practice somebody in Flemington decided to start the Rotary Club of Flemington and I was invited to be a foundation member, a chartered member. I've been with the Club ever since. It's through the Flemington Rotary Club that I did a bit of community work. I was Chairman of Community Services with Flemington Rotary, and I did organise a lunch for elderly people. We raised funds to help the Western Autistic Centre down in Ascot Vale. Eventually when the Club brought the first kid from the Philippines through the ROMAC Project, I became involved with ROMAC, and from there I went from one job to another. I was the National Medical Director, and now I'm the National Operations Director. ROMAC stands for Rotary Overseas Medical Aid for Children. It was first formed about fifteen years ago by a Rotarian from Bendigo – Barry Cooper. ROMAC brings children under the age of fifteen from the Asia/Pacific Region to Australia for lifesaving and dignity restoring surgery, where those surgeries are not available in their home country. Our most famous patients really were the Bosin Siamese twins from Papua New Guinea about four or five years ago. They were brought here as an emergency evacuation because one of the twins was dying. They were operated on at the Children's Hospital and were separated very successfully. They are four – five years old now. They are two beautiful kids. I guess in over fifteen years we've brought more than ninety kids to Australia.

When I first got involved with ROMAC it was one Rotary district's project. Today, we have fourteen of the twenty-three districts in the country involved in the ROMAC project. Manningham is part of District 9810 of Rotary International, and I think Doncaster Rotary Club did raise some money for us. District 9810 is the most supportive of our project. It is an incredible humanitarian project and it is our aim that one day it becomes an international project. When I was the National Medical Director all the referrals had to come through me. I made sure that they fitted our criteria before I approved them. Once I approved I passed it to the Operations Director, which is my current job. I organise all the travel documents and air travel and everything else. The majority of our funds do come from donations from the individual Rotary Clubs and individual Rotarians. We don't get any money from the Government at all. We raise every cent of our money. And the whole organisation is run by volunteers, which means that ninety-five percent of our funds goes towards the children. Our administrative costs are almost zero. The concept of ROMAC is one of those things that touches people. Once you see what we do you can't help but become touched by it.

Kim and Theong with their son Shaun

Back Cover: The Sentinel by Inge King, at the Doncaster Road exit of the Eastern Freeway.

Suburban Voices - Stories of Multicultural Manningham

Suburban Voices tells the stories of a group of immigrants who have made their home in the municipality of Manningham. Reflecting successive waves of immigrants – in particular residents of Italian, Greek, Chinese and Persian descent – this project reveals the vital character of Manningham.

Suburban Voices was initiated and produced by Whitehorse Manningham Regional Library Corporation as a Federation Community Project.

Copies of Suburban Voices -Stories of Multicultural Manningham can be obtained by contacting Whitehorse Manningham Regional Library Corporation. Retail Price: $11.00

Source:

Apr2025 - Permission Granted by Whitehorse Manningham Regional Library Corporation to reproduce on our website. DTHS Library: DB0245

Alves, Lesley, 1946- & Rice, Tess. 2001, Suburban voices : stories of multicultural Manningham / written by Lesley Alves ; photographs by Tess Rice. Whitehorse Manningham Regional Library Corp Box Hill, Vic. ISBN 0 9587367 0 7 https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/catalog/2643116

Pages

Suburban Voices