Speaker background
John Procopiadis was born in 1935 to a Turkish-speaking Greek couple from Cappadocia in central Turkey. His father was a confectioner. His mother was a home-maker and skilled Persian carpet weaver. John grew up in Surry Hills, attended Crown Street Public School and, later, Cleveland Street High School. In the early 1950s, after their council-owned home was sold, the family moved to Kensington. After finishing high school, John became a mechanic. For several years, he had his own workshop. He then worked as a sales representative for Stuart Alexander & Co Pty Ltd, an importer, marketer and distributor for tobacco products. He was a founding member of the PanHellenic Soccer Club, and, between 1994 and 2012, was elected as a councillor on the Randwick City Council. Between 2009 and 2010, John was mayor of Randwick.
Interview summary
The interview provides a detailed description of the Greek community in Surry Hills during the 1940s and an equally illuminating description of family life in a Turkish speaking [Karamanli dialect] Greek family. John provides a vivid description of his youth in Surry Hills. The later part of the interview concerns his role in the establishment of the Greek community’s principal soccer club, PanHellenic, and his involvement in developing soccer at Kingsford’s Castellorizian Club. The interview also highlights John’s role in securing heritage listing for the Greek community’s oldest churches and the establishment of a sister city relationship between Randwick City Council and the Greek island of Castellorizo.
Interview highlights
highlight
John describes a typical Sunday for his extended family at his uncle Jack’s house during the late 1940s.
We’d all sit down and have dinner. And then, after dinner, others would arrive. Friends and that, and the ladies would be in one room, and would play records and so forth, 78s, of which I still have! Greek ones. We’d play music. And in the other room would be my Dad, my uncle Harry, who came out [to Australia] with my mum, Mr Ballson, Baloglu, whose grandchildren include George Miller, the movie director, and his brother John, and Billy etc, he would come. And the Velkou family would be there, and the Kallinikos family. Harry Kallinikos, and his wife. And sometimes the girls would come, her sisters. And they all [the women] spoke Turkish in that room. [In the other room they’d be] smoking cigars, smoking a pipe, others were smoking cigarettes, and they’d be playing cards. That was the men’s room. The ladies were in the other room. That was a ritual that we did often.
Timecode 17:31 - 19:19
highlight
John explains how he helped his father in his confectionary business just after the war.
I was old enough then, and I would catch the tram from out the front of our house, go down into York Street, carrying two boxes, solid cardboard boxes, tied together with a handle: my Dad made a handle with the string. I’d then get a bus to Mosman. To the theatre, which is now a heritage theatre.
Nick: Is that the Orpheum Theatre?
Yes. And I would deliver them there. And I’d do that on a regular basis. Also, … to Bondi Road. There was a picture theatre there, and next to it was a milk bar. The Kouvaras family. And I would deliver there. I’d get the tram up at Taylor Square.
[...]
Nick: They were all Greeks.
All Greeks! And to the milk bar next to the Commercial Banking Company of Sydney, and they would give me a milk shake. The brothers there. They were a lovely family. I’d get a milk shake, and then get the tram and then walk home. And I did that until the old man gave it away.
Timecode 37:38 - 39:32
