SMH June 1997: My Island Homes
This article from the Sydney Morning Herald (June 7, 1997) is displayed with the kind permission of its author John Huxley.
MY ISLAND HOMES
by John Huxley
Can a migrant ever call Australia home? Some never lose the yearning to return to the land of their birth. The people of Kythera know better than most. While there are now 20 times more people of Kytherian descent in Sydney than are left on the island, many have gone back. The Herald's JOHN HUXLEY travelled to Greece to find out why.
A piece of masonry crumbles and falls. A wild goat shrieks. Somewhere over the mountainside the sun drops into the Aegean Sea so suddenly that it is almost possible to hear the splash. And an eerie, shivery chill creeps like the pink dusk over Paleohora, the ruined, medieval capital of Kythera. Built high on a hilltop at the head of one of the numerous gorges that rip like the wind across the Greek island, surrounded on three sides by sheer 100-metre drops, Paleohora was considered impregnable. In the 16th century, though, the town was discovered and brutally sacked by Barbarossa, commander of the Turkish fleet. Hundreds of Kytherians were slain, several thousand sold into slavery. It is to this bloodstained site, invisible from the sea, inaccessible to all but the seriously inquisitive, that Spires Panaretos regularly comes to "keep in touch" with . . . well, what exactly? "My history. My roots. My culture." His Kytherian ancestry. Here, he explains, he feels some sense of belonging. Of continuity. Of somehow "being in context". He feels that the place, its past, its ghostly people are part of what made him. Of course, it's all much, much more complicated, but it is places such as Paliohora that persuaded Panaretos, a 32-year-old electronics expert, to "return" to the tiny island of Kythera, after being born and spending most of his life on the larger island on the other side of the world, sometimes referred to as "big Kythera": Australia. More than a century ago Panaretos' grandfather became one of the first Kytherians to emigrate, seeking a better life in Australia. Thousands more followed. Estimates vary but there are now probably more than 50,000 people of Kytherian descent in Sydney alone and only 2.500 Kytherians left on what an infamous piece of local graffiti once announced as "the fatherland". Mass migration, though, has stopped. Increasingly, Kytherian Australians - "the KAs" as they are sometimes called - are returning to Greece for holidays, for long stays and, as in the case of Panaretos, to live permanently. Improved communications and greater affluence have made it easy. But as many people soon discover, the homecoming - especially for those for whom Australia is the natural and Kythera the spiritual birthplace - can be as painful and as confusing as the leaving. "I have friends who can't decide now where they should be, who shuttle back and forth," Panaretos says. "Ultimately, I think you have to make a decision. Otherwise, it is like trying to stand still with a foot in two boats. But it's not easy. If you have known two countries, it becomes almost impossible to say, 'Where is home? Where do I belong?' " The dilemma is not uniquely Kytherian. It is universal, common to each of the many millions of migrants and their families who constitute modern Australia. The Kytherian migrant's story — a never-ending tale of two islands, "here" and "there", home and away, "little Australia" and "big Australia" — may be more dramatic, more spectacular than most. But it is, to a greater or lesser extent, the story of every migrant to Australia. A story that tells of hopeful exile, desperately hard work and often disproportionately high achievement. A story filled with fractured families, dislocated life-styles, protracted feelings of "temporariness". And, possibly most painful of all, a story suffused with an aching to "return" to a place that, once rediscovered, is too often found to be not the place remembered. As Spiros Panaretos suggests, return migrants may merely be seeking "a romantic vision" of somewhere that no longer exists.
SERVING thick, sticky-sweet Greek coffee, standing in the kitchen baking baklava, kadaifi and galaktobouriko pastries, or simply sitting outside his cafeteria at Agia Pelagia, gazing out to sea, Theo Fardoulis often wonders what life would have been like in Sydney. He should have gone, he explains. Was meant to go, back in 1951 when his two brothers, Manuel and Peter, went. Instead, just as he was preparing to join them as planned, they wrote to him about their new life, working for the Water Board or in fish shops.
"They said, 'Don't come, you'll hate it. We're all having to work like slaves,' " he explains through an interpreter. Eventually, they prospered: Peter is retired; Manuel, after running several businesses, a fish-and-chip shop, a pet shop, laundromats, a sugar-coated-peanut factory, is semi-retired; the Fardoulis family runs a famous confectionery firm. But Theo stayed. Married. Started a family. Became famous for his pastries, respected for his wise counsel, his constant sociability. Travelled occasionally in mainland Greece, but never beyond. "I have no regrets," he says. "I'm happy. I never worshipped money. I sit in my little cafe now and the world comes to me. I never go to see the world."
Thousands of other Kytherians did, however. Fardoulis reckons that of his class of 160 at school in Potamos, the island's biggest village, only 30 remained. The rest emigrated, some to the Greek mainland, some to America, many to the big island of Australia, in search of opportunities unavailable on Kythera. Through history, Kythera has been acclaimed as the island of Aphrodite. It has been coveted, because of its strategic location, by merchant and military invaders: Minoans, Venetians, Turks, Germans, each of whom has left marks on the landscape, scars on the psyche. It has been celebrated, because of its rugged, wind-raked beauty, by painters and poets such as Baudelaire, who wrote of the blessed "island of sweet secrets" and "festivals of the heart".
The gods, however, were less generous when it came to bestowing upon Kythera resources capable of supporting its people. Spiros Panaretos says of the spectacularly beautiful but largely barren land: "Locals joke that God made the world in six days and on the seventh day, before resting, he piled up all the bits of rock left over and called it Kythera." The population of the 248 sq km island peaked — apart from a brief period during World War II when it provided wartime refuge for mainland Greeks — at almost 15,000 in the middle of the last century. It later slumped to about 2,500 as wave after wave of emigration, especially in the 1880s, the 1920s, the '40s, '50s and '60s left homes abandoned, schools derelict, cafes closed, homes abandoned, village squares empty.
Today, there can be few — if any — families who do I not have links with Australia. Almost everywhere on the island reminders are to be seen: from the old people's home, funded with KA money, to the postcards hanging over the counter of George Kapsanis' mini-mart at Agia Pelagia, showing old views of the NSW State Parliament building. "From George Souris, the politician. He's my cousin," explains Kapsanis. "Most of my relatives are in Sydney." The local historian Peter Vanges, who was born on the island but came to Sydney at the age of 15, says that little is known of the first Kytherian to arrive in Australia, in 1850, Emmanuel Kritharis.
Better documented is the progress of Athanosios Kominos, who arrived in 1873. His experience was to be emulated by thousands of later Greek migrants: he laboured in a colliery in Balmain, eventually earning enough cash to open his own business, a fish shop in Oxford Street. Far from discovering a land of milk and honey, early Kytherian migrants, some as young as 12, found life in Australia difficult, hostile even, after they arrived, usually at Circular Quay, hoping at least to be met by friendly kin. Even a relatively recent migrant such as John Kalligeros, who has returned to live in Kythera, recalls vividly the shock of arriving in Sydney after a long voyage on the P & 0 ship Himalaya. "It was 1963 and I must have been five," he says. "We were picked up in Sydney by a cousin in an old Holden and driven up to Newcastle. I remember Dad sitting in the back on a trailer and me chucking up. I'd never been in a car before."
Like the Kalligeros family, many Kytherians settled first not in Sydney, where they were eventually to move as wealth permitted and educational needs demanded, but elsewhere in NSW, often in the bush. The young Peter Vanges went to Nyngan. John Fardoulys, 60, who now lives in Agia Pelagia, went to Hay. "Obviously, it was because of family ties," he recalls. "But I think many migrants went out into the country because it was easier to find work, cheaper to buy a business." Usually a retail business: a food shop, a cafe, a milk bar or the modern equivalent, a take-away.
"By 1930, in almost every NSW town and in many in Queensland, Kytherians could be found in the 'cafe' business," Vanges says. Despite animosity from long-established Australians, which fuelled anti-Greek riots in Sydney in the 1920s, newcomers tried hard to assimilate. Hugh Gilchrist, author of Australians and Greeks, says: "The Greek cafe proprietor did not attempt to serve his nation's traditional dishes. He gave his Australian customers what they wanted ... fish and chips, oysters on shell, grilled steak and eggs, plain, boiled vegetables, bread and butter, tea and coffee, fruit salad and — innovations from the United States — soda drinks and ice-cream." Some, no doubt, still struggled, went bankrupt, closed down, were forced to try something else.
But it is some measure of the Kytherian migrants' industry, will to succeed and determination to give a better start to subsequent generations that such a small island has produced an impressively long list of high-achievers. It includes academics, politicians, judges and prominent businessmen, as well as high-profile people in the arts, such as the film-maker George Miller, whose family, Miliotis, comes from the market-village of Mitata. Miller has helped restore the church at Mitata. "I did it in honour of my father," he explained. "I think it was his great-great-grandfather who built the church and was the first priest there." Now, say locals. Miller is planning to provide a statue for the village square, appropriately showing a young man waving good-bye before migrating. Such generosity is typical of KAs.
Through organisations such as the Kytherian Brotherhood, based in Chippendale, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary, they have helped to fund projects back home and to ensure that their culture survives in Australia among migrants and their families. For most, that is commitment enough. Peter Vanges, who describes himself as "a proud Australian — but Kytherian to the bone", says that problems of "belonging", of feeling "at home", of being in the right place, were resolved long ago. Unambiguously. In favour of Australia. For many, though, the pull of Aphrodite's island remains as strong as ever. For increasing numbers it is proving irresistible.
Call it the "fridge factor". As dusk turns to darkness at Paleohora, Spiros Panaretos explains: "When I lived in Australia I was fascinated to meet Kytherians — men and women in their 50s and 60s, who had been in the country for years — who still lived in an old house. In some cases, who hadn't even bought basic things like fridges.
"It wasn't that they couldn't afford them. It was because they felt, even after all that time, that their arrangements were temporary. That it wasn't worth buying a new fridge because they would be going home soon." That was almost every migrant's intention, Vanges says. "The plan was: work hard, acquire some wealth and return home as soon as possible." Of course, for the vast majority it proved impossible.
Until recently, that is. Cheaper flights, greater affluence, longer holidays and, in the case of many older migrants, retirement, have combined to encourage KAs to return.
As Vanges explains, there is a strong imperative for older Kytherians, concerned that they have limited time left, to rediscover their roots, perhaps even to die in their birthplace. But the urge to "return" is also strong among young and middle-aged people, many of whom were born and grew up in Australia.
They are to be seen and heard all over the island: John and Irene Kalligeros and family, formerly of Newcastle, now running a restaurant at Carvounades; Theo and Helen Chlambeas, who left Blakehurst to return to Agia Pelagia, where they are now hoteliers; Peter Defterevos, who spent the "best years of my life" in Australia but decided to return to the capital, Hora, where he now runs a car-hire business.
George Galanis, the storekeeper at Potamos, who returned after working in Blacktown and Newport; Anna Kominos, a former Sydney journalist, who teaches English and helps produce a local tourist newspaper; Helen Tzortzopoulous, a self-styled "eastern suburbs girl", who after many years shuttling between Australia and Greece has settled with her Kytherian husband in Agia Pelagia.
And the island's present administrator, Emmanuel Cassimatis, who returned to Kythera 14 years ago after spending 22 in Sydney.
Each had his or her own reason for returning: sick relatives, "a safer, more satisfying life for the children", "to drink at the well [of local culture]", "a Lawrence Durrell experience" (after the British novelist and poet who spent much of his youth in Corfu), "curiosity". Some are not even sure why they came back. "I've made two big mistakes in my life," jokes Defterevos, an Aussie Rules enthusiast whose brother and sister still live in Hurstville. "The first was leaving Kythera. The second was coming back."
Whatever the reason, the return, as Helen Tzortzopoulous explained, can involve "enormous emotional upheaval". In part, says Spiros Panaretos, that is because many return migrants are willing victims of a time-warp. "It is as if they are playing in their heads a video of the island that has stuck on one particular frame. They forget the film has moved on. The Kythera they are seeking is a myth."
Professor Manuel Aroney, of Sydney University, put it differently. "Among my earliest and strongest recollections as a child was a sense of being Greek, being Kytherian... Kythera to me was an abstract concept — something undefined, special, mystical, a reflection of a parental love and nostalgia for a motherland forever lost to them." Even for KAs who have returned for holidays, the gap between abstract concept and reality can be disconcerting.
Anna Kominos, who describes her decision to live in Agia Pelagia as a "turning away from the modern world", compares the feeling on arrival to that of an astrowalker: "Sometimes it feels like you haven't really landed; that your life must still be in a suitcase somewhere else."
Does she sometimes, too, feel schizophrenic? Yes. The privilege of being both Australian and Kytherian, she fears, could be a "lifetime curse" because of the choice, the compromise, the sacrifice it involves.
Predictably, all return migrants can conjure up a list of things about their beloved Australia that they miss: Friendliness of the people. Freedom. Footy. An infrastructure - of transport, medical care, local government and so on - that can be relied upon to work.
"You forget what Greek bureaucracy can be like: unreliable, slow, corrupt," says one man. Another says: "After Australia, the pace of life seems very, very slow. Now, that is part of the charm of the place, but it can also drive you nuts."
Less predictably, many return migrants are surprised to discover that, even after several years back in the community, they are still made to feel like xenos, outsiders.
"I think local Kytherians can be suspicious of us," says John Kalligeros. "They tend to think that anyone from Australia comes back with pockets bulging full of dollars. They think that every Kytherian living in Sydney must be rich and powerful. It's just not true."
The answer, he says, is to slow to the local pace, to accept Kythera's perceived shortcomings, to "go with the flow". Instead, KAs too often make relations worse by flouting their "local boy made good in Australia wealth", suggests Anna Kominos. They buy big BMWs. They build homes with specially imported Australian bricks. They carry video cameras. They complain loudly that this or that thing "wouldn't happen back in Australia".
Not a sensible thing to say. But perhaps, ultimately, migrating back to Kythera is not a sensible move anyway.
New Mercedes 180s cruise the narrow lanes of Kapsali, the picture-postcard, seaside village reportedly visited by Princess Di, Donald Trump and whoever is the latest "new Onassis". Skilled workmen are crawling over the mazy streets of Pitsinades, an old Venetian village undergoing stylish renovation.
Discos, hotels, new tavernas are opening across the island. Piles of bricks and pallets of marble tiles attest to a mini-building boom. The first "I Love Kythera" stickers, complete with red heart, appear on car windscreens.
But such signs of activity can be misleading. Photographer James Prineas, a third-generation Kytherian, whose pictures were exhibited in Sydney last year, recently lamented: "The whole island is now virtually financed by Australia, either by relatives sending money there or returned migrants living on portable pensions that keep it alive."
That may be only half the story; locals readily concede that the island is also subsidised by taxpayers on the Greek mainland.
Tourism, never enthusiastically embraced by the island, remains a short-season phenomenon, confined largely to other Greeks and KAs. So apart from that, some building, some government offices, some farming and fishing, what employment prospects can Kythera offer its children?
"Very little," concedes Spiros Panaretos, who must divide his time between the island and the mainland, where he has been working in the medical equipment industry.
"Not enough," admits John Kalligeros, who plans to return to Australia when his children reach university age.
Thus, the ebb and flow of migration continues. Out of Kythera. Into Kythera. And not just from Australia. There are now on the island an estimated 300 Albanians - come to Kythera, just as Kytherians came to Australia, in search of a new life.
