Greek Australians share stories: ‘Poverty is why we came’

Katerina (known on Instagram as Kat Zam) was born and raised in Australia, and had both sets of grandparents nearby as she grew up. “All four came here in the 1960s as refugees from Greece. I listened to their stories ever since I can remember myself and always admired their courage. They left everything behind and came to this faraway country, with no money and no knowledge of English even,” she tells Kathimerini.

Kat recently came to a very uncomfortable realization that prompted her to capture these and other stories of the Greek diaspora in Australia and specifically of the older members of the community.

“Their generation is now the ‘grandma and grandpa’ generation to us. These years are the final chapter in their lives,” she says.

Kat’s maternal grandparents left the southeastern Aegean island of Rhodes for Sydney in 1961. Like many other economic migrants at the time, they got work in a factory. “I used the first money I made to buy new clothes and I was so happy,” Kat’s grandmother says in one video, reminiscing on how she had nothing of her own back in Greece; even the clothes she wore were hand-me-downs. A few years later, the couple moved to Mildura, a small regional city in northwest Victoria, which is where Kat was born, in 1990.

“We had goats in the yard and used to go for walks along the river. My parents divorced when I was 9 and my mother worked, so I spent a lot of time with my grandmother,” she says.

Outside the home, she did not have regular contact with Greek culture, as the community in Mildura was very small and its church only opened a few days a year. She didn’t go to Greek school either, but she listened to a lot of Greek music. “I like the traditional island music and Glykeria; I’m just like a little old lady,” she quips.

‘One of the common threads in their stories is the poverty that made them leave Greece and embark on this huge voyage by sea. They made a decision that was certainly not easy and spent almost a month traveling’

In one song titled “Diaspora,” Glykeria sings, “They worked for you and me.” It’s a verse that always strikes a chord with Kat, who feels that it expresses the story not just of her own family, but of most Greek immigrants at the time.

Driven by her desire to record these stories, she launched a new profile on Instagram, called it Greek Diaspora Stories and asked her audience to put her in touch with Australia’s “yiayias and papous.” She got dozens of responses and invitations to visit them at home. “I’ve done 15 interviews so far. It may not sound like much, but it really is. I spend several hours on every visit. I don’t have a camera, just my phone and a microphone. I think having bigger equipment would make them nervous,” she says.

She edits each video to a length of just 20-30 seconds, noting that social media users tend to have short attention spans. “There’s also the fact that creating a 10- or 20-minute video takes a lot of time, and I do all the editing on my own. I think the length I have chosen is ideal,” explains Kat.

The footage is not just of the interview subject, but also of their homes. The nostalgia for Greece is palpable, in Ioanna’s Acropolis-shaped lamp, a santour that Christos brought with him from Ioannina in 1956, in the shepherd’s crook from Deskati that Nikos holds against his shoulder. You can hear the click-click of his worry beads on the video, and the crack in his voice as he says: “To leave is very difficult, but… poverty. That’s why we came here.”

“One of the common threads in their stories is the poverty that made them leave Greece and embark on this huge voyage by sea. They made a decision that was certainly not easy and spent almost a month traveling,” says Kat. She also felt like they were eager to talk to someone about their lives, possibly because their social circle has only gotten smaller with age.

“The one thing that did strike me was that even though they’ve spent almost a lifetime in Australia, their English is not very good,” she says, adding that most never completely assimilated into Australian society – but they are not alone. “It’s not just Greeks who watch the videos I post, but also Turks and Italians. They can identify with the stories because there are so many cultural similarities,” says Kat.

Greek Diaspora Stories is just the latest of Kat’s projects as a content creator; she already has a very successful series of comic skits poking fun at the cultural differences between Greeks and Australians. One of her favorite characters is a familiar one: a Greek yiayia. Yet even though so much of her material is inspired by her ancestral land, she remains confused, culturally, after having experienced numerous periods when she didn’t feel “Greek enough” or “Australian enough.” The issue of identity became even more confounding when she believed that she could not be both queer and Greek, particularly as a result of the Greek Orthodox Church’s stance on matters of sexual orientation and gender identity. “I tapered off speaking Greek and stopped listening to Greek music. I felt sad, ashamed and guilty for a very long time,” she says today, explaining how that has changed over the past year or so, also thanks to her social media projects, which have helped her reconnect with her Greek roots.

“I really feel like a proud, queer Greek now. It hasn’t always been easy, and especially not at first, but I am truly grateful to be a part of such a supportive community, which is why I think it’s important to speak openly about the issues of the LGBTQ+ community. I am also really happy that Greece legalized same-sex marriage. It’s a step in the right direction and we hope that it will also help the Greek community become more progressive and open-minded. It is 2024, after all, not 1940!” Kat lives in Melbourne now and she has never traveled to Greece. The first place she wants to visit when she does is Rhodes. Such a big trip is not on the books just yet, though. “The next step is to put together an exhibition with the portraits of the people who spoke to me in the diaspora project,” she says.

“I don’t know how many more interviews I will do. Every time I prepare for a new one, I tell myself that I need to stop at some point. But then I go to the people’s homes and see how they’re expecting me, how kind they are and how moving the visit is, and my life just becomes richer. OK, I’m going to cry now, and I don’t even have any rizogalo,” she says, lamenting the absence of her favorite Greek comfort food.