‘Australia is a good country, Australia is a lucky country for us wogs’

YANNI  - Greek Migrant

When I first arrived in Australia I didn’t speak English, I travelled by ship rom Greece with my older sister, we were both in our early twenties and we came here in hope of a better life and new opportunities.

Maria my sister met a Greek man named Peter and was soon married, I fell in love with a Spanish woman named Gina and we married a year later . We lived in Redfern in the seventies with all the other Greek families looking for a new start. It was a little Greek ghetto, we owned our own home.

My first and only job was with the railway and my wife worked part time in sandwich shops to bring in extra cash. We were what the Aussies would call Wog’s and most of them hated us because we stole there jobs and smelled of garlic. We didn’t care, we didn’t talk to them, we didn’t speak good English.

Every month I would send money home to my family in Greece and eventually my brother Nick and his wife Connie came to Australia. When they arrived they lived with us, they had a bed in the front room until they could afford a deposit for a house of their own.

WE now had a chi9ld, a little girl, she was so beautiful and in this country has every opportunity to be anything she wants. Something I never had in my small village in Greece. Australia is a good country, Australia is a lucky country for us Wog’s.