2019-08-22

Sydney

Moschatos, Stavroula

Greeks in Australia

Oral history

Doumanis, Nick

Digitised

Copyright holder : State Library of New South Wales
Please acknowledge : Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales

Interviewer: Nick Doumanis

Occupation: Factory worker
Year of arrival: 1957
Method 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.

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.

Sound recording

Siobhan Campbell