Topic: What did they come to?

Between 1914 and 1918 about 400 Greek people came to live in Darwin. Almost all of them were from the eastern Mediterranean islands, particularly Kastellorizo. They had come in the hope that in Australia they and their families would have the opportunity to lead better lives. Darwin, where a gigantic new meatworks was being built, promised plenty of work for good money.

But Darwin was a very strange place for these new settlers. They soon found that they had been drawn into to the centre of an industrial cauldron, where trade unionists tried desperately to exclude the Greeks so as to maintain the workplace monopolies of their members. Despite this hostility, the Greeks found work – at the meatworks and on the railway extension from Pine Creek to Katherine. Some of them also found business opportunities in Darwin – especially in catering related activities. They lived in several enclaves, where they were allocated small plots of land upon which they could build whatever they could create from materials they could scavenge. They set about creating a community, symbolised by the opening of a church in 1917 or very soon after.

When the meatworks project was closed down in 1920 most Darwin wage earners were thrown out of employment. There was widespread distress and the government offered free passages to people who wanted to escape to the southern parts of Australia.

Most of the Greeks took the opportunity to leave, but about 70 of them chose to remain. They laid the foundations for a numerous and prosperous present day Greek community that fondly regards Darwin as home.

Biography

Peter Forrest grew up in western Queensland. He recalls that ‘in my childhood days the towns out there were sustained by Greek cafes – you ate at the Greeks or you went hungry. I had great respect for those café proprietors and a keen interest in their backgrounds. It led me to study Greek history and my special subject in my last year at school was the Peloponnesian wars.’

Peter became a writer and historian, specialising in the history of the people and places of northern and inland Australia. He came to the Territory in 1978 and since then, in partnership with his wife Sheila, he has written more than 30 books and delivered countless lectures, newspaper articles and broadcasts. In 2024 Charles Darwin University conferred on him the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters, in recognition of his contribution to the Territory’s history.