State Library of New South Wales
Greek Orthodox Community logo
Greek-Australian Archive
Evdokia Kokkinakos
Speaker Profile Προφίλ ηχείου
Evdokia Kokkinakos
| Language: Greek
Evdokia Kokkinakos

Speaker background

Occupation: SeamstressYear of arrival: 1957Method of transport: Ship (Toscana)

Evdokia Kokkinakos was born in Athens in 1934. She worked as an apprentice dressmaker for an haute couture designer, who made evening gowns for high-end clients including Athina Onassis and the Greek royal family. At the age of 23 she was sent to Australia by her father, to visit her younger sister who had migrated the previous year. A year after her arrival Evdokia would be married and then running a mixed business store in Alexandria. She and her husband lived above the shop before purchasing their first home in Concord where they settled. Over the years she undertook various jobs as a seamstress in the textile industry.

Place of birthAthens, Attica
Location in AustraliaConcord West

Interview summary

Evdokia discusses her early years in Athens, where she was enjoying her work as a seamstress, and her busy social life. Being the dutiful daughter, she followed her father’s wishes to come to Australia to visit her sister. She would come to realise her father wanted to marry her off and spare him from providing a dowry.

Interview highlights

highlight
Evdokia explains her reluctance to come to Australia, but goes on to justify her father’s reasoning in encouraging her to go

Evdokia: I personally didn’t want to come to Australia because, as I said, I had my job. I had my friends, the girls that I worked with. Together on the weekend, we’d go to the cinema. We’d go on trips. I had a friendship group. We were ten, eleven girls, and we worked together for years, and I didn’t want to come. But one of our neighbours asked my father about my sister, the one that’s after me, that he wanted to marry her. He’d already come here. My father asked me, saying the man is interested in Georgia. ‘Shall we tell her to marry him? What shall we do?’ ‘Don’t ask me,’ I said to him. ‘He wants her, and you should ask her.’  

Interviewer: He had already left for Australia and asked for her hand in marriage after many years?

Evdokia: No, he wasn’t here too long, about a year, maybe two at the most and I said she is the one responsible and she is the one to ask, don’t ask me about this and she agreed to go. However, my father thought about it and said he should send me. What he said to me was he didn’t want his other daughter to be by herself and I should go and keep her company. But, for me, it wasn’t this, because, on the one hand, he was justified. We were 4 girls. How was he going to marry them? It was a problem. How was he going to marry them? He said, ‘The first one’s gone and married over there. The other one may as well go. It reduces the number. With only two left behind.’ I told him that I didn’t want to go. I have my job. I like it. I don’t want to leave from here. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘Go for a short while to keep her company and if you don’t think you can stay, come back.’ Nevertheless, I came. But not willingly.

Timecode 08:29 - 10:56
highlight
Evdokia recounts the early days when she was living with her sister and brother-in-law in their Haberfield home along with several other relatives

Evdokia: In this house, in one room, lived my sister with my brother-in-law. In the other, lived one of his brother’s, the married one with his wife. In the lounge room of the house lived his sister with her husband and two children. In the other lived my brother-in-law’s two brothers, and I lived in the other small room. Think about it, how many people lived here.

Interviewer: How many, 12, 13?

Evdokia: No, it was two for my brother-in-law, his brother and wife that’s four, and two other siblings makes six and me seven.

IInterviewer: How did you all manage in the kitchen, was only one person cooking or did you take it in turns?

Evdokia: Usually, his sister, who lived there with the two children, cooked early. That left the others to cook, me and my sister, for example, because, I tell you, my brother-in-law’s sister was also looking after her siblings, the single ones, that were there. And then my sister was to cook for us. That’s it. We didn’t have any problems.

Timecode 18:43 - 19:51

Explore more

Oral History in Catalogue

Related photographs

Listen to more oral histories

Minas Samios
Minas was born in Kythera in 1937 and came with his family to Australia at the age of 11, initially living in Fremantle and then Sydney. His father operated a milkbar in Paddington, while he attended the local primary and high schools. In secondary school he developed an interest in mathematics and physics, followed up with radio and television technical courses, and then made a living repairing televisions. He travelled to Europe from the mid 1960s to the early 1970s, during which time he spent a few years in London. Later, during a visit to Kythera he married a local girl and had two boys.
Skevos Tsoukalas
Skevos Tsoukalas was born in Palestine in 1945, a year after his parents and six brothers fled their home in Kalymnos. In 1947, after the death of their mother, the family returned to Kalymnos, where Skevos and his siblings were raised by their aunties and grandmother. Due to financial hardships, Skevos was unable to complete his schooling. In 1964, he decided to join his five brothers in Sydney, who had migrated several years earlier. He worked in a variety of jobs, before joining scores of other Greek men on the construction site at the Sydney Opera House in 1968. He worked there for fifty years, becoming one of its longest serving employees.
Stavroula Mousmoutis
Stavroula was born in 1932 into a poor agricultural family on the Ionian island of Kefalonia. She lost her mother when she was twelve and was brought up by her stepmother. She experienced WWII and the occupation of Greece by the German army. She travelled to Australia to join her brother. In Sydney, she worked as a seamstress and married. She struggled through a difficult marriage with a man who suffered from mental illness and was prone to violence.
Adrianos Kazas
Adrianos was born into a large family in the village of Neo Roino near Nafplion in 1935. He wanted to be a pilot, but lacked the means and social connections. He migrated to Australia because of limited opportunities in Greece. After arrival, he concentrated on quickly mastering English, as a way of escaping menial work. He eventually secured clerical work in the postal service. Over the years, he participated in a number of associations, including the Greek Community of NSW, and has been a prolific writer and published author.
Konstantina Tourvas
Konstantina Tourvas is an artist, activist, teacher and writer. She was born in 1940 in Evdilos, Ikaria and grew up in an orphanage. She migrated to Australia in 1959 on the Dutch ship The Waterman. She lived first in Woollahra, then Marrickville and currently resides in Turrella.
Matina Mottee
Matina was born in Hobart, Tasmania, to parents from the island of Kythera. Her father operated a fish shop and café, and then gradually built a fishing business in Hobart. Matina often visited her Sydney relatives in her youth, and met her husband, Con, during one of these visits. The couple settled in East Sydney and then Croydon, where Matina raised four children while Con developed a thriving legal practice, which serviced many Greek clients. It was in her later life that Matina applied her energies to support services for migrant women and for victims of domestic violence. She received an Order of Australia for her services in 1994.
Ioannis Dimou
Ioannis Dimou was born in 1932 in the village of Pigi, located in the Epirus region. He married a local girl and had three children. Finding it hard to make ends meet as a builder’s labourer, he believed that he could earn far more doing the same job in Australia. After being sponsored by his brother, who had migrated a few years earlier, he arrived in Australia and commenced work in the construction industry in the Parramatta area. Ioannis dedicated much of his free time to promoting Greek social and cultural life, especially the local Epirote brotherhood and youth soccer.
Vivi Germanos Koutsounadis
Vivi Germanos Koutsounadis was born on the Greek island of Chios in 1943. Vivi’s parents wanted to educate their three children. Realising it wouldn’t be possible if they remained in the village, the family emigrated to Australia in 1954. Growing up, Vivi worked in her parents’ milk bar in Redfern. Her experiences inspired her to pursue a career in welfare and social justice. Vivi had a high level of involvement in Sydney’s Greek community. In 2000 she became the President of the Greek Orthodox Community of NSW, the first woman president in its history.