Athina Stavrellis was born in Nigrita, Serres in Macedonia in 1938. She spent her formative years on the island of Mytilene, where her father worked as a public servant. When height restrictions forbade her from entering the Teacher’s Academy on the island, she moved to Athens to enrol in an educational college for young girls. Athina married in Athens. Her first child was born a few months prior to the right-wing military junta taking power in April 1967. In Australia, she worked, initially, as a Greek afternoon school teacher and, later, as an Early Childcare teacher.