The pioneering Greek immigrants of Biloela
Biloela
This is the story of young immigrants from the small towns of South Rhodes (Rhodes Island, Greece) who came to work in the sugar cane and cotton fields of Biloela, Queensland, Australia. These early immigrants were overwhelmed by homesickness for their native peoples, the families they left behind, and their church. However, they seized the opportunity to improve their lives by working in the harsh rural environment of Queensland’s cotton and sugar cane fields in Biloela.
By 1934, Callide Valley had 40,000 acres of cotton planted and a butter factory opened in 1936.
In March 1934, The Courier-Mail reported: “Among the cotton growers of the Biloela district there is a former general of the Ural Cossacks who fought in the Great War (World War I) and a Russian Orthodox priest.”
A Greek Orthodox archbishop, Timotheos Evangelinidis (1880 – 1949), the metropolis of Australia and New Zealand from 1931 to 1947, visited Biloela from time to time to baptize children, give communion to the Orthodox faithful, and preach the Divine Liturgy.
In the early years after WWII, the population of Biloela was about 1000 people, making it the largest city in the Banana Shire.
After obtaining considerable savings, many of these early immigrants started businesses in the city, such as cafes and restaurants.
Phillip diakou
Phillip Hagi-Diakou was born in the coastal town of Gennadi, on the island of Rhodes, Greece. In 1936, at the age of fourteen, he said goodbye to his mother, his sister and his people and traveled with his father on the Italian ship, Romolo, bound for Queensland, Australia, in search of his fortune.
Phillip worked alongside his father in the cotton and sugar cane fields of Biloela and had to cope with hot and humid conditions, as well as dingoes and snakes.
However, he was determined to succeed through hard work and devoted himself to learning the English language by studying a Greek-English dictionary.
He was nineteen years old when World War II began, so he enlisted in the Australian Army and was sent to Darwin, where he served as a cook. It would be the beginning of a life-long career in the kitchen.
When the war ended, he moved to Adelaide, South Australia and bought Café Gouger, the Café that changed his life.
Gouger Café-Adelaide
The hard-working, dedicated Diakou family made their Gouger Cafe an icon of Adelaide’s seafood restaurants headed by Phillip and his wife Anastasia in the kitchen and their three children, Maria, Steve and Bill. The Gouger Cafe was a pioneer in seafood dining in Adelaide and Gouger Street would become the center, with the cream of South Australian seafood restaurants.
The Stiliano family
Stylianos (Steve) Stiliano (nickname Matsi) said goodbye to his mother and their small hilltop village of Mesanagros, Rhodes Island, Greece in the mid-1930s and traveled with Yianni and his father’s Marko and brother to work in the fields of sugar cane and cotton. from Rockhampton and Monto in Queensland, Australia.
In 1944, Steve met and married his wife Erini in Biloela, who had also emigrated with her family from Lahania, Rhodes Island, Greece.
They had five children: twins, George and Anna, Philip and Gary who were born in Biloela and Stella who was born in Adelaide in 1957.
Mixed Agriculture – Cotton and Livestock
The Stiliano family had a mixed agricultural company on the outskirts of Biloela that integrated the cultivation of crops (cotton was the main cash crop), as well as the raising of livestock (mainly dairy products) for meat and milk.
The cotton seeds were planted in the spring and the crop had to be harvested before the weather could completely damage or ruin their quality and reduce yields.
His cows had to give birth to a calf before they could produce milk.
Some of their calves were raised for calf and about three-quarters of the heifers became replacements for their adult milk-producing cows.
Long working hours cause tiredness and fatigue. And the family was exposed to numerous life-threatening safety and environmental hazards, including snakes, heat exposure, falls, injuries, and pesticides.
Coffee in Amount
The Stiliano family farmed, worked and endured in the cotton fields to earn enough money to set up a cafeteria in Monto, about 60 miles from Biloela, which offered fast service, long opening hours, and tasty meals seven days a week. week.
Their cafe featured the traditional English-style steak and eggs, a mixed grill, chops and sausages, fish and chips, as well as the American burger, ice cream, ice cream, smoothies, and soft drinks that can be purchased as sit-down or take-out meals. .
Every Tuesday would become a popular social pastime at his café by farmers in the surrounding areas who took a break from their daily tasks on their farms to enjoy a delicious café-style meal with family or friends.
Nick frossinakis
Nick Frossinakis along with his father Manoli and his brothers Philip and Tom from the small town of Lahania, on the island of Rhodes, in southern Rhodes, Greece, left the uncertainty and economic instability of post-war Greece in 1949 with the hope of achieving a more stable life in Australia.
They migrated to Biloela, where they worked and held out in the cotton fields to earn enough money to buy their own small farm.
Nick’s sister, Eleni (Helen), stayed in Lahania, the island of Rhodes, for about three years, then traveled to Australia with another immigrant from Lahania to reunite with her family in Australia.
Horse-drawn plows were used for soil cultivation on farms in those days to prepare for sowing seeds or planting to loosen or stir the soil.
They lived in houses made of sheet iron on dirt floors and suffocated during long, hot tropical summers.
Their houses had no power, so kerosene lamps with wicks were used to burn.
Staying clean and using the bathroom wasn’t as easy in those early days as it is today.
The bathroom and toilet were in stark contrast to the suites we are familiar with today.
Whether it’s very cold or swelteringly hot, many immigrants had to make do with a portable metal tub for bathing and wherever they could find privacy outdoors was their bathroom.
And linen canvas water bags were a necessity in those days because the availability of clean, fresh drinking water in remote rural locations was essential for survival. All the farmers had to depend on lots of sun, warm conditions and 4-5 months of frost-free temperatures to produce the fluffy white cotton.
Milky cows
Subsequently, the family acquired around 120 dairy cows that they milked every morning and then sent them to the factory to produce dairy products such as drinking milk, cream, butter, yogurt and cheese for human consumption.
Christos and Zaharoula Arnas
Christos Arnas was from the village of Katavia and Zaharoula Diakomihalis came from the village of Lahania on the island of Rhodes.
In the late 1930s, they both decided to leave the island of their birth in search of a more peaceful life in Australia, bringing with them the virtues of old-fashioned rural, farm and village life.
Christos emigrated to Biloela, Queensland, Australia in 1936.
Zaharoula was brought to Australia by her father, Phillip Diakomihalis in 1937.
They met and married in Biloela in 1937 and together they bought a farm in rural Callide, outside Biloela, where they grew cotton and raised cattle.
Their children Irene was born in 1938, Phillip was born in 1943 and Mary in 1944.
Every morning before going to school, Irene, the eldest daughter, would feed 32 calves and then after school she would feed the pigs.
When the Arnas family went shopping in the town of Biloela, they traveled in 19th-century style, on horseback and by buggy (an old-fashioned reminder of a simpler, slower-paced era).
Mixed Agriculture – Cotton and Livestock
The Arnas family’s mixed agricultural company integrated crop cultivation (cotton was the main cash crop) and cattle ranching.
It reconnected them to the traditional and self-sufficient rural lifestyle to which they were accustomed in their homeland of South Rhodes.
Milk, meat, cotton, cereals, vegetables and fruits were produced on his farm.
They worked in the hot sun and in the rain to watch over their crops and livestock seven days a week, in silence and without complaint.
In the cotton fields, the family worked and struggled to get the fluffy white fluff out of the boll while trying not to cut their hands on the sharp points and had to bend over to pick the cotton because the average cotton plant is less than a foot long. height meter. .
The cows needed grass, hay and grain to feed them and adequate grass to graze, while the newborn calves needed to nurse every three to four hours or an average of 7 to 10 times a day and consumed 1 to 2 liters of milk during each breast-feeding.
Their grazing pigs presented other challenges because poor nutrition will slow a pig’s growth and affect meat quality and pig welfare.
The Arnas family fed their pigs a varied diet such as corn, barley, soy flour, bread, vegetables, fruits, and pork pellets to stay healthy.
Banana peels are also good food for pigs due to their high energy content.
Each pig needed to eat an average of 6 to 8 pounds of feed per day and could roam freely around Arnas’s farm, in the sun and outdoors.
One room school
Callide Elementary School was a one-room school built on stilts with a single teacher who taught academic basics to various grade levels of primary (elementary) boys and girls from the surrounding rural areas of Bilolela.
Nick and Tom and his brother’s Philip were the first Greek immigrants to attend Callide’s primary school. Nick would sit his brother Tom on the crossbar of his bike to ride the 3 km on a gravel road to school every day. Irene Diakos also cycled to school.
Anna and George Stiliano were little farmers taking their first look at a classroom with rows of desks and a large teacher’s desk at the front.
That walk from his home to this strange new world was so different from his old family farm, pastures and fields.