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Speaker Profile Προφίλ ηχείου
Angelo George Hatsatouris
| Language: English
A person sitting in front of a bookshelf

Speaker background

Year of arrival: 2024

Angelo was the eldest of five children, and grew up in Taree, where his father owned and operated a cinema. Angelo and his siblings completed secondary and tertiary education in Sydney, where most of their extended family lived. He worked as a solicitor in Maroubra, where he had many Greek clients. Since the 1960s, he has been involved with a number of Greek associations and philanthropic causes, principally by offering his legal and managerial skills. He was a key figure in the founding of the Kastellorizian Club, one of Sydney’s largest and most important Greek clubs.

Location in AustraliaKensington

Interview summary

Angelo recalls his family’s businesses and the nature of everyday life in 1950s and 1960s Taree. He provides a rich account of his childhood experiences and the operations of his father’s cinema. He also recalls his work with the Kastellorizian Club and the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese.

Interview highlights

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Angelo reflects on what was it was like growing up as a Greek in Taree.

Angelo: I had to sweep the theatre, clean the toilets, do all that sort of stuff, learnt a bit of projecting, help paste up posters. […] I was able to do all that on my own. By the time I was twelve, I think I’d saved enough money to buy myself a bike. […] In a country town, we were still outsiders, because of growing up in an immediate post-War era some people did not [know] the difference between Greeks or Italians, and you were all painted with the same brush.

Interviewer: So, you were called dagos?

Angelo: Well, you had all that stuff. I was probably, because I was a good athlete and probably smarter than the average kid around the place, I got by and I also learned how to fight, even though I was much smaller and that sort of helped. I also made a point of knowing people who were older and bigger, who I called in as allies, and they were always there to support me. I sort of had a reasonably easy time, mainly because my father had the cinema. But we were still looked at a little bit differently.

Timecode 09:10 - 10:45
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Angelo describes what rekindled his interest in his Kastellorizian background, and how this led to his interest in participating in the Kastellorizian Brotherhood in Sydney.

Angelo: One of the places I visited, and I was apprehensive about it because it just occurred to me. Greece wasn’t a highlight or a place I intended to visit because I didn’t speak Greek very well. I understood it. I had a blockage in terms of being Greek. It was probably because of the upbringing in the country town, being Greek. […] But I went to Kastellorizo, and the only reason I went there is because I met my father there. […] It turned out he became unwell and had not been back in 50 years, on the basis that there was nothing to go back to because whatever was there had gone. There had been an earthquake in 1926, then the war. […] But I met him there … and as a result of that connection and engagement, I had a different aspect on Kastellorizo. 

Timecode 26:09 - 28:29

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