(An extract from the memoirs of Prof. Manuel J. Aroney)


My maternal grandparents Theodore and Eleni Aronis

Another well-known family in Aroniadika was that of Theodore and Eleni Aronis (Papadominakos). Theodore was a relatively tall man with a moustache, distinguished looking and with a reputation for honesty and fairness to the extent that the villagers would often call on him to adjudicate in local disputes. His wife Eleni was somewhat short with a beautiful rounded face, green eyes and fair skin. Both were very hard workers, renowned for their hospitality, and with a house which was well-stocked with barrels of wine, cheeses, olives and other produce from their land and livestock. As well, Theodore Aronis was a master tradesman who specialised in the excavation and construction of wells and of “sternes”, i.e. large in-ground water tanks. Their children were in order of age: Kalliopi, Panayiotis (Peter), Nicholas, Marouli, Stamatiko (Stamatina) and Anargiros (Andrew). In time, Kalliopi was to leave for America; Marouli stayed in Kythera with her parents; the other four settled in Australia.

Nicholas and Peter initially migrated to Chicago in the USA in 1910, seeking work, but patriotic fervour caused them to return to Greece to fight for the mother country in the Greek-Bulgarian war of 1912-13 which led to the reunification of Macedonia with the modern Greek State. Their father could sense ominous war clouds about to enshroud Europe and he urged them to leave Greece, this time for Australia as he’d been told it would be easier to make a living there. Before their departure in 1913, Nicholas married Stamatoula Kepreotis who by inheritance had land holdings in and around Aroniadika – another ten years were to pass before the couple were reunited. Nicholas was a very hard worker and within a few years he bought and paid off the prosperous New York Cafe in the town of Nowra about one hundred miles south of Sydney. Some six years after his arrival, he took in as a partner his cousin Nick Aroney (Anastasopoulos) who earlier arrived from Greece as a young boy and proved he was very capable and diligent in this type of business. Peter preferred a less demanding life and he opened up billiard rooms in Nowra. Soon after, Andrew joined his brothers in Australia; by this time all of them had the locally accepted surname of Aroney.

Stamatina, later to become my mother, was sent from Kythera in her late teens to work as a domestic servant in Athens for a family called Venetzianos. These people lived in a grand two-storey house in Metropoleos Street near Syntagma Square, a plush part of Athens, and in Summer would retreat to their holiday home in the fashionable coastal suburb of New Phaleron. Stamatina was paid little but she learned much about needlework and home arts and became especially skilled in cooking traditional Greek dishes and sweets. In 1923 Nicholas arranged for Stamatina to accompany his wife and her sister Yiannoula on the voyage to Australia to join the other members of the family in Nowra. This represented a change of plans for Stamatina who had been preparing to join her sister Kalliopi and husband Basilios Cominos in America but was prevented from doing so at the time because of immigration restrictions imposed by the United States Government. Nicholas proved to be a generous family-oriented man; he paid for the fares from Greece and, more importantly, he extended a sincere and loving welcome to his relatives. Nicholas and Stamatoula in subsequent years had two sons, Theodore and Brettos (Victor) and a daughter Helen. Peter met and married an Anglo-Australian woman called Kathleen who already had a young girl Eileen; they added to the family when their daughter Theodora was born in 1920.

The Kytherian grapevine was very effective spreading news and gossip to communities, groups, individuals along the eastern coast of Australia and to inland towns in New South Wales and Queensland where people from the island had settled. It was not long before someone undertook a matrimonial matchmake (proxenia) between Stamatina in Nowra and Dimitrios who, since 1921, had been working in Townsville about fifteen hundred miles to the north. Andrew escorted his sister Stamatina to North Queensland where she and Dimitrios met and became engaged. The wedding later took place in the Anglican Cathedral Church of St James on the 5th of June 1926 and on this second train trip to Townsville, which took four days, Stamatina was accompanied by Andrew, Peter’s wife Kathleen and her young daughter Theodora. Dimitrios was forty-one years old at the time and Stamatina was thirty.


Wedding photograph of Dimitrios and Stamatina Aroney in Townsville in 1926.
Standing at the back (left to right) are: Cosma Marendy (best man) and Stamatina’s brother Andy Aroney. The lady seated on the right is Peter Aroney’s wife Kathleen.

A sequel to this story took place in Mackay, a coastal town two hundred miles south of Townsville, when the couple went through another wedding ceremony on the 11th of January 1928, this time according to the rites of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The priest was Father Daniel Maravelis whose mission at the time was to tour central and northern Queensland to “regularise” marriages, baptisms, etc. Subsequent to this an official Marriage Certificate was issued by Greek Orthodox authorities in Sydney.


Wedding photograph of Dimitrios and Stamatina Aroney in Townsville in 1926.