“I wonder how long it takes for the wound to heal?” was my first reaction when last Sunday I got an invitation to visit a house in Doncaster to attend a private museum exhibition on migration.
As a new migrant, any mention of immigration is like scratching a fresh and bleeding wound. And for this reason, as has also been documented by scientific research, many first-generation immigrants avoid participating in such events.
With all these thoughts swirling in my mind and while trying to find an excuse to avoid it, I found myself late last Sunday afternoon driving towards Doncaster to visit the ‘Kalos Irthate’ exhibition organised by three young third generation immigrants, ‘The Poseidoniate’.
My heart tightened even more as I saw the white sheet-covered sign in the front yard of the detached house in Doncaster, betraying that Yiayia’s house had been put up for sale or perhaps had already been sold. I was hesitant.
Parked at the entrance to the garage, stood the ’75 Holden HJ Premier, proud, polished and boasting of its former glories.
With uncertain steps I made my way to the entrance, where I was greeted by a young girl, Christina Savopoulos, whom I already knew from a Greek language conference and another museum exhibition where we had met some time ago. How nice to meet young people with concerns about language and culture. I feel that our efforts as educators may not be wasted after all.
“Kalos Irthate” she said with a smile and started to show me around the house that was bought in 1976 and belonged to the Pontian-born Basilios Savopoulos from Kastoria and Persefoni Mistakopoulos from Mesopotamia who are no longer alive.
“This was the house of my grandfather and grandmother,” she explained. “We tried to rebuild it as it was when I spent the best moments of my childhood here,” she began to unravel the tangle of her family history.
“When we decided to sell the house, we had to pack up Pappou and Yiayia’s things,” she concluded. Opening that trunk for the first time brought back all those wonderful memories and we didn’t want to throw away all those heirlooms – remnants of the lives of people who loved us more than their own lives,” Christina said.
“Here, together with my friends John Tzelepis and Jamie Gallos, we gathered heirlooms that we discovered in the trunks of not only my own, but also their grandparents’ trunks.
“These objects all tell the story of the first Greek immigrants to Melbourne.”
The sadness and sense of loss that I had felt up to that moment began to fade like the old black and white photographs still adorned in the silver frames on the chest of drawers, giving way to some faint hopes and a fair amount of wonderment as the shape of the experience began to take on more and more of an oxymoron.
On the one hand the three young people, born and raised in Melbourne, with cultural concerns, with love and respect for their heritage, who fought for many years in schools to learn Greek and who are still struggling not to become exactly what the name they gave their group ‘The Poseidoniate’ * implies.
And on the other hand there’s me, a young immigrant, swaying between identities and contrasts, wandering between the rooms of the house and the memories of the life of another immigrant, who came to Australia many years before me, at a completely different time and carrying a very different “dowry” in her suitcase, but with very similar hopes and dreams to my own.
In the first room where Christina and Giannis showed me around, I discovered a treasure trove of documents, identity cards, applications, certificates from the trip to Australia of the families of Konstantinos and Sevasti Papastergiopoulos, Yiannis and Roula Tzelepis, Tasos and Maria Vasilopoulos and Dimitrios and Kanella Gallos.
Every document and a series of endless agonies until the long-awaited swearing-in for citizenship. And then the wedding, the baptisms of the children… Laughs, tears, memories of a lifetime…
On the wall, among the photos of the boarding on the Patris, the words of grandfather Tasos Vassilopoulos, from a poem he wrote in 1961, when he took the road to uproot from his homeland.
“This day of separation on October thirteen must be called a day of fate” we read in the second stanza.
In the next room, Yiayia’s wedding dress. “She was a seamstress” proudly boasts granddaughter Christina.
In a corner of the living room the old gramophone and the 45 rpm records and a little further away the armchair of Pappou where he used to drink his coffee while reading his Greek newspaper.
“My grandfather reads Neos Kosmos daily and without fail,” said Yannis.
The “History of Ancient Greece” and “Byzantine History”, which were used to teach Greek to the children of the first immigrants of the last century, rested on the small table, and on the other side, among the magazines of the Pontian Home, the albums with family photos tell the story of the difficult but full of successes and joys life of the Greek immigrants of the last century.
In the backyard, in the garden where Pappou planted his bachi, a lemon tree and on the clothesline, Pappou’s work uniform and Yiayia’ robe are drying.
The homemade lemonade I was treated to was more to quench my nostalgia for what I too left behind just eight years ago.
Time had passed and the exhibition was about to close. I had to go.
The emotions I took with me on my steps to the exit were very different from the ones I entered the house with. My heart was now full of emotion and admiration for an era that is slowly becoming a thing of the past but also hope for the future, hopeful that our young people will not forget and will stand with respect for history and their roots.
“We will reopen the exhibition to the public and we have more plans for the future” promised Yannis and Christina who escorted me to the front door.
The exhibition will be open again on December 1, 8, 14, 15 and 22 from 1 pm to 5 pm.
The price of admission is $5.
Register here.
Follow Kalos Irthate @kalosirthate_exhibiton and @theposeidoniate on Instagram
** The group has taken its name from the homonymous poem by Konstantinos Cavafy, Posidoniatae (1906):
The Poseidonians forgot the Greek language
after so many centuries of mingling
with Tyrrhenians, Latins, and other foreigners.
The only thing surviving from their ancestors
was a Greek festival, with beautiful rites,
with lyres and flutes, contests and wreaths.
And it was their habit toward the festival’s end
to tell each other about their ancient customs
and once again to speak Greek names
that only few of them still recognized.
And so their festival always had a melancholy ending
because they remembered that they too were Greeks,
they too once upon a time were citizens of Magna Graecia;
and how low they’d fallen now, what they’d become,
living and speaking like barbarians,
cut off so disastrously from the Greek way of life.
Original in Greek:
Την γλώσσα την ελληνική οι Ποσειδωνιάται
εξέχασαν τόσους αιώνας ανακατευμένοι
με Τυρρηνούς, και με Λατίνους, κι άλλους ξένους.
Το μόνο που τους έμενε προγονικό
ήταν μια ελληνική γιορτή, με τελετές ωραίες,
με λύρες και με αυλούς, με αγώνας και στεφάνους.
Κ’ είχαν συνήθειο προς το τέλος της γιορτής
τα παλαιά τους έθιμα να διηγούνται,
και τα ελληνικά ονόματα να ξαναλένε,
που μόλις πια τα καταλάμβαναν ολίγοι.
Και πάντα μελαγχολικά τελείων’ η γιορτή τους.
Γιατί θυμούνταν που κι αυτοί ήσαν Έλληνες —
Ιταλιώται έναν καιρό κι αυτοί·
και τώρα πώς εξέπεσαν, πώς έγιναν,
να ζουν και να ομιλούν βαρβαρικά
βγαλμένοι — ω συμφορά! — απ’ τον Ελληνισμό.
*This is a translation of the original story in Greek
