Speaker background
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.
Interview summary
Vivi outlines her experiences as a child of Greek emigrant parents and early schooling at Glebe Point Public School. She recalls the years spent working alongside her parents in the milkbar and her professional work as a strong advocate of equal rights, at both grass roots and policy levels.
Interview highlights
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In the early days Vivi and her family lived in a large house in Glebe belonging to her uncle. She tells us the rooms were rented out to several newly arrived Greek migrant families and how it was her responsibility to look after all the children
So gradually the place filled up with brothers and sisters, families and children. And so we were in a Greek environment, and, of course, again, I was the eldest of all the children there. There were my two brothers, another two brothers, another two sisters. So, what I did I had to take them to school every day and bring them back and supervise them and mind them and so on. And when I went to school, to enrol at school at Glebe Point Public School, the headmistress said, ‘What’s her name?’ My aunty, who spoke no English, took me. And we said, ‘Paraskevi Koutsounadis.’ ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘ How are we going to remember her name? We’ll call her ‘Vivi.” So Vivi I became, although Vivi is quite common in Greek, too. Vivi I became, and I was the first migrant child in the school. So I was seen as an oddity, and I wasn’t happy because the teachers kept telling me: ‘You are no longer Greek Vivi. You’re Australian. You have to speak English. You can’t speak Greek.’
Timecode 12:26 - 13:59
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Vivi recounts her experiences working in her father’s shop, the Chios Milk Bar on Regent Street, Redfern. She tells us it became a kind of unofficial welfare centre for Greek migrants working in nearby factories
The shop was open from 6 o’clock in the morning to 12 midnight. 7 days a week. Never closed. Never closed because people came to get newspapers. We were the only shop to have Greek sweets and Greek newspapers, at the time. So, we had a lot of Greeks come, and a lot of people came and sat down and they were crying. So my mother and father would ask them why, and some of them would want a room, or work or whatever and we sat down and talked to them. And being the eldest, I had to do a lot of welfare work. But also I was a volunteer for the Good Neighbour Council because in the beginning that was the only agency that welcomed migrants and also South Sydney Community Aid, which was an organisation not very far from my father’s shop and I was their migrant adviser while I was working there.
Timecode 34:47 - 36:03
