Συνέντευξη με Κατερίνα Λουκά, μία από τις πρώτες ελληνίδες της Μελβούρνης 1983 - Ιnterview with Katerina Louka, one of the first Greek women in Melbourne 1983

One of Melbourne's oldest Greek women died last Friday at the age of 89. This is Katerina Louka - Lekatsa who came to Australia in 1908.

Life is full of strange coincidences. Such a coincidence led me to meet KATERINA LOUKA, who has been in Australia for almost a century. With this acquaintance I discovered that Katerina Louka is the unwritten history of the Greek community.

A story of 88 years that began to be written in 1895 in the small village of Stavros in Ithaca, filled with images, snapshots, situations and incidents of two and a half generations in Australia and continues to be written today in a beautiful little house in Parkville, Melbourne. And if the good God wills, this story will write many more pages.

In my interview with Katerina Louka I will not seek to write the history of the Greek Parikia (community). What I will try to do is to write - at least briefly - her own story and the way of life during those years exactly as she told me, with honesty and openness.

"In my years the world was different. Girls married younger and most often did not know their husband. They had to do what their parents told them. If they knew the bridegroom, there was more for the girl. The consulate was closing... and then to the church. "Where to talk on the street to a child? If it wasn't a close relative, you would put yourself in big trouble later at the house at night.

• When I married my blessed Dionysus, I did not know him. My uncle Dimitris Paxinos was the consulate. He was very old, handsome and very intelligent. I spent 37 happy years with him. He died as a young man of 75 years in 1960. - All the years we had shops. One of the best in Melbourne.

“Do you know how many years I have in Australia. Seventy five! I came on 8 Aug 1908 just turned 13. I lived in Cecil St, South Melbourne and worked in my uncle's greengrocer. There were also some other families, from Kastellorizo, Samos and from our island, Ithaca. "Other Greeks also had shops in the city. Famous were the Lekatsades in Flindera St. I liked the streets in the city which were wide and clean. You could see all the horse-drawn carriages. The same roads today. With the difference, now you can't walk away from the crowds and the cars... Times have changed my child.

"Who would have told me in those years that television would come out, that people would go to the moon, that you would go to Greece in 20 hours.

"I am happy for the great development of life, just as I am proud of today's Greeks who have changed our way of life. Everywhere you see Greek shops, schools, churches Greek newspapers, Greek programs on TV and radio, Even Australians are learning Greek.

"I went to Greece for the first time in 1948 and set foot in my ancestral home on August 8, exactly 40 years from the day I left. My mother lived only 6 days and on August 14th she died. At least, I managed to see her before she died.

"In those years, in Australia, it was dangerous to speak our language. We would speak Greek only in our homes.

The Australians were very hateful and cursed at us. They wouldn't let us in, no matter what we did. Besides the Church of the Evangelism, I remember when I first came there was also the Orpheus club. Later, a certain Venlis opened the first school and later organized theater performances. We played "Diakos" Golfon and a comedy "The Indiscreet Musafiri" written by a doctor named Kyriazopoulos. We sent all the money for the refugees of Smyrna. We gave the money from the dances to the hospitals.

"A few years after Venlis, Vrachna also opened a school. This woman worked very hard. She was not only a good teacher, but also a good mother to all the children.

• From my second trip on the Marconi ship, I have unpleasant memories. When we arrived in Italy, most of my things were stolen at the port. They left me nothing in the suitcases, only a few of my clothes.

"I want to go back to my homeland, because no matter how we do it, our roots are there. But now I am old and in Ithaca I have no one. All my folks are here in Melbourne.”

At the end of our conversation, Katerina Louka, in addition to her beautiful poem that left me speechless, also told me the following that may surprise many other Greek Αustralians, old and new: "Although I lived 75 years in Australia, always having money, houses and shops , meanwhile I would not give a single Greek cypress to buy all of Australia".