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

Speaker background

Occupation: Factory workerYear of arrival: 1957Method of transport: Ship

Stavroula Moschatos was born in 1935 and grew up in a poor farming family in Lakonia. Stavroula lived for most of the 1940s and early 1950s in Athens, where she mostly did nurse duties in a hospital. She was selected as a nanny for a Greek diplomat and followed his family to Sydney. Stavroula (or Voula) met her future husband through friends, who asked her employer for her hand in marriage. They had three children and settled in Kingsgrove in the mid 1960s.

Place of birthAgoriani, Peloponnese
Location in AustraliaKingsgrove

Interview summary

Stavroula details her wartime ordeals, how she survived as a young country girl in Athens and her time as a nurse in post-war Athens. She discusses the circumstances of her migration and the unusual reasons why she ended up in Australia. She provides a detailed account of her journey, her homesickness in the early years, and the youth scene for Greek migrants in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The interview details her family life, how she assisted the migration of her siblings and cousins, and her working life.

Interview highlights

highlight
Stavroula explains the unusual circumstances in which she was selected to come to Australia.

At the hospital where I worked, a lady had a baby. Her husband was about to be sent to Australia as consul general, Mr Zafiriou [...]. This was 1957. They needed a nanny. They also had a two-year-old. They needed help…. His job included interviewing girls who were interested in migrating to Australia [...] and numerous girls would have to see him, and eventually I went to see him [...]. After some time, we all wondered if we were selected. We used to ask each other about results, we heard nothing. Maybe he was making fun of us. One day, as I was leaving work a young woman met me at the entrance and asked if I knew a ‘Voula Papadopoulou’. I said, ‘that’s me’. Mr Zafiriou has told me to tell you go to see him tomorrow at his home, at ‘Immigration’ [Intergovernmental Commission for European Migration]. When I went, he told me that, of all the girls, we have selected you. ‘Ok’, I said. ‘Thanks very much’. He said, the day after tomorrow we are leaving for Australia, so you will need to come to Immigration so I can have your papers ready. Ok. He did that. In fact, he had EVERYTHING ready. My passport ready, all paperwork, everything! Most people need months to get ready…. Within three weeks I was ready to board.

Timecode 36:30 - 40:10
highlight
Stavroula recalls the circumstances in which her marriage was arranged.

I met a lot of young Greeks at St Sophia in Paddington [...]. We got together on Sundays. We would dance. We would sing. This happened every Sunday. I started to feel better about being here. It was during that time that I met my future husband. As soon as he saw me, he wanted my hand in marriage. I said I could not, as I had agreed with the consul’s family to work as a nanny. He [future husband] said, “I don’t care. I will wait till you finish”. He was persistent [...]. One Sunday morning there was a knock at the door. I went to open it, and I see his parents. I froze. “We want to speak to the consul”, my [future] father-in-law said. They were invited in. “My son loves Voula. We know she can’t leave her job yet, but that’s fine. Why don’t they get engaged in the meantime?” [The consul said] “We should ask Voula want she wants”. They call me in. I was shaking [...].“Do you agree?” they asked. “We know you can’t leave right now” my father-in-law said, “but we don’t want to lose you either”. “Do you want him, Voula?”, they asked. I replied “Well, yes”. The consul said, “That’s fine.” “I will go and find another girl at Bonegilla [migrant camp] [...]. We don’t want to ruin your marriage prospects.”  

Timecode 47:18 - 50:20

Explore more

Oral History in Catalogue

Related photographs

Listen to more oral histories

Lea and Nikolaos Kanellakis
Nikolaos and Lea came from the northern Peloponnese:  Lea was born in Planitero and Nikolaos in Valmantoura. Nikolaos came to Australia in his late 20s under the migrant assistant scheme, while Lea was sent by her family to join siblings that had migrated earlier. Nikolaos tried several jobs, including working for the national postal service, where he mastered Sydney’s street map and started his own removalist business. Lea worked as a seamstress and then worked in the removalist business after they met and married in 1968. They started a family in Marrickville and then bought an old soldier settler’s house in Earlwood, which he demolished and built a new house.
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.
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.
Father Miltiades Chrysavgis
Father Milton John Chrysavgis was born in Patras, Greece in 1932. His childhood was spared the terrors of the second world war, but food shortages and famine were pronounced. In 1950, compatriots enticed him to Australia. Disembarking in Melbourne, “Milton Johnson” as he was initially known, worked at Raffles Café on Collin Street to pay back the 200-pound fare. Given his academic leanings, he immediately learnt English before commencing university, studying History, Psychology and Philosophy. Matriculating with an MA, he spent a year as a teacher before he was ordained as a priest and posted to South Australia between 1957-62. Upon moving to Sydney, he oversaw the building of St George Greek Orthodox Church in Rose Bay. He has been an active member of the Australian Council of Churches, and lives in a retirement village in Randwick.
Angelo George Hatsatouris
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.
Platon Ioakimidis
Platon Ioakimidis was born in 1932 into a Pontian Greek family in Molocha, central Macedonia, and came of age during World War II and the Greek Civil War. After years of menial work, he and his young wife took advantage of Australia’s assisted migrant scheme. In Australia, he settled in Redfern, where he and his wife raised a family of four. After trying his hand at various labouring jobs and small business ventures, Ioakimidis settled on a job fixing poker machines. He was involved in the Pontian Greek community and has been a church chanter.
Michael Diamond
Michael Diamond was born in Sydney in 1935 to parents from the island of Kastellorizo. He grew up in Surry Hills at a time when it was a hub for Greek migrants. After graduating from Sydney High School, he attended the University of Sydney, where he excelled academically and in sport. Michael had a distinguished legal career and was awarded an AM and MBE. He played a critical role in the expansion of various Greek associations and the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Australia.
Melpomene Kaimasidis
Melpo Kaimasidis was born in 1937 in the village of Pentavryso in Kastoria, a prefecture of Macedonia, Greece to a large multi-lingual family originally from Samsounta in Pontos. She speaks Greek, Pontian and Turkish. As a young woman, she worked in the fur industry in Kastoria. In 1957, she migrated to Australia.