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Speaker Profile Προφίλ ηχείου
Konstantina Tourvas
| Language: Greek
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Speaker background

Occupation: Artist, Art teacherYear of arrival: 1959Method of transport: Ship (The Waterman)

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.

Place of birthEvdilos, Ikaria
Location in AustraliaTurrella

Interview summary

Dina was not expected to survive at birth because her mother took ill and died 6 months later. She was the fifth child in the family and the fourth girl. After her father remarried, she grew up in an orphanage. Her brother brought her to Australia for a better life. She describes her first experiences in Australia and how she was married by proxy. She recalls attending evening college and art school and her efforts to educate herself while at the same time raising her children and working in the family business.

Interview highlights

highlight
Konstantina explains how she married her husband by proxy soon after arriving in Australia

Finally, they introduced me to Gregory; my brother knew his family. He was born here. His Greek was terrible, and I would laugh when he spoke (in Greek). A very naive young man. My brother organised it with his parents and he took me to Centennial Park to speak to me. And with his broken Greek he asked me if I wanted to marry him and I, who was laughing all the way through it, like an idiot said yes. It was a type of proxy. My brother had told me he was a good boy, he was a mechanic, he had a car and would take me for rides. . . . I was young and naïve and I said yes. In that way I became committed to a marriage that in the beginning was fun. But as I was maturing and I saw life differently, we were not matched. A good young man, calm, but we were not well matched.

Timecode 25:20 - 26:55

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