About this project

The Archive explores how Greek migrants faced the challenges of building a new home in Australia. Through oral histories and photographs, it documents how Sydney’s Greeks contributed to the city’s social and cultural remaking and forged their own unique identities. It shows how this generation created a community in a faraway land and remade themselves as hardworking business owners, factory workers, sports people and homemakers with distinct regional, familial and Australian influences.

Created in partnership with the University of New South Wales, the State Library of NSW, the Greek Orthodox Community of NSW and the Australian Research Council, the Archive is a rich collection of publicly accessible primary resources that document this extraordinary time in the history of the Greek community in Sydney.

The State Library of New South Wales is one of Australia’s oldest and most important public institutions. Actively collecting since 1826, the Library preserves and presents the social, cultural and scientific history of NSW and Australia for the benefit of all. Its rich collections, both physical and digital, alongside partnerships with the public library network across NSW and other vibrant collaborations enable Australians to examine their past and imagine their future.  

The Library’s vast collections reflects the variety of formats which people have used to record experiences. They comprise books, magazines, and newspapers, manuscripts, photographs, artworks, maps, objects, ephemera, oral histories and increasingly digital material. In recent years oral histories have become an indispensable format for documenting people’s stories because of their immediacy and directness. They are also critical for documenting communities who have little access to traditional documentary formats.  

The Library’s collection has been – and continues to be – developed through purchases, legal deposit and donation, bequests and transfers from other organisations. Importantly, the Greek-Australian Archive project has added significant new oral histories and images to the Library’s collections that shine a light on Sydney's rich multicultural history. 

The Greek-Australian Archive website is a collaboration between the State Library of NSW and the University of NSW.