Groundbreaking Greeks

Georgios Tramountanas from Athens who was one of the first two Greek migrants to come to South Australia.

Generally credited as being the first Greek to migrate to South Australia in 1842, Georgios Tramountanas showed true pioneering spirit when he moved to the sparsely-populated Eyre Peninsula in the late 1850s.

According to documents held in the Adelaide office of the National Archives, in 1878, after more than 20 years spent farming near Elliston, George applied to become a naturalised settler in the Province of South Australia – but as George North, not Georgios Tramountanas. This seemingly unrelated choice of surname shows how difficult it can be to track Greek family history because of the tendency of both officials and migrants to anglicise names – ‘Tramountanas’ roughly translates as a Greek northerly wind.

While George North stayed put in South Australia, others moved around. After arriving in Sydney in 1905, 15-year-old Grigorios Kasimatis (later known as Gregory Casimaty) tried his luck in Queensland and New South Wales before settling in Tasmania. Gregory established the Britannia Café in Elizabeth Street, Hobart in the early 1900s and followed this with many other successful business ventures. Known for his charity and benevolence – including providing Christmas dinner for 200 unemployed single men in the Depression years – Gregory Casimaty was recommended for inclusion in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list by his local member of parliament, Adrian Gibson, in 1964.

As an established member of the Hobart community, Gregory Casimaty applied for a number of friends and relatives in Greece to migrate to Australia, one of whom was George Gabriel Haros.

Trading on talents

George Haros arrived in Australia in the 1930s and applied his inventiveness to producing an efficient way of heating water for tea and coffee in cafés like the Britannia.

While George Haros is probably best known for the invention and subsequent establishment of the Haros Boiler Company in 1939, he didn’t restrict his inventiveness to the catering industry. In 1942, the Army Inventions Directorate in Melbourne was informed that he had designed a new anti-aircraft shell using two shell cases, the inner one of which was magnetised.

Another George – George Lucas Adamopoulos – also used his scientific skills to good effect and, together with Sydney merchant Gregory Dimitri Michal, patented certain chemical solutions and processes for use in the manufacture of mineral water.
Building up business

Like George Adamopoulos, Peter Michelides chose to build on his previous experience. After arriving in Perth in the early 1900s, he established a business manufacturing cigarettes at 248 Murray Street, in the central business district of the city.

His business flourished over the following 40 years and included the setting up of a factory. Over time, the packaging of Peter Michelides’ products changed, which can be viewed in a register of many fascinating labels put together and approved by the Customs and Excise Branch.

By 1940 the Commonwealth Investigation Service (CIS) – precursors to the Federal Police and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation – had started a dossier on Mr Michelides after receiving reports that he had been ‘full of admiration for Fascist Italy’ on his return from an overseas trip in 1939.

This dossier includes later correspondence about Peter Michelides’ 1954 appointment as the Western Australian Greek Consul, by which time the CIS changed its tune:
‘… he is a man of substance, a person of excellent repute and in these circumstances no objection is raised by this service to his appointment.’
Sadly, National Archives also has records describing the demise of Michelides Ltd, including films of its closing down sale in 1960 and the later sale of Peter Michelides’ home on Mounts Bay Road.

Another Greek who built up a business from scratch was Eustratios (Stratos) Haritos.

According to his naturalisation application, Stratos arrived as a single man in Darwin on the Mataram in 1915 at the age of 27. By 1923 he was married with four children aged five and under, and was living and working at the Darwin Salt Works. Haritos did well at the salt works and, according to property records held by the National Archives, was able to buy land in and around Darwin.

His property included a block of land on the corner of Daly and Cavenagh Streets, where he built a grocery store. This building was later requisitioned by the Commonwealth Government for use as an emergency post office following the destruction of the Darwin Post Office in the bombing of Darwin in 1942. While the rest of the Haritos family were evacuated from Darwin along with other civilians, George Haritos enlisted and remained in the Northern Territory with the Army.

Serving Australia

While George Haritos was Australian-born, many Greek-born men were also quick to sign up and serve Australia in times of war. Constantine Aroney, born in Cerigo and living in Melbourne, was involved in both World Wars, first enlisting in 1915 and serving at Gallipoli, France and Belgium as a private in the 24th Battalion. In October 1939, he enlisted in the Commonwealth Military Forces and seven months later he transferred to the 2nd Australian Imperial Forces and the Headquarters of the 1st Australian Corps, serving in Palestine, North Africa, Greece, Crete and Syria.

While serving in Greece, Driver Aroney’s cultural background proved extremely valuable. Following the debacle on mainland Greece, when the Allied forces were overrun by the German Army, Aroney managed to escape to Crete in an open boat, taking 23 other soldiers with him, whom he cared for with the help of Greeks on Crete – a heroic feat for which he was awarded the British Empire Medal.