Asia Minor Greek Historical Society Inc. (AMGHS) : Girdis, Mark & Ourania

MARK and OURANIA GIRDIS

From the recollections of their daughters –my mother, Mary Miller and my aunt, Marie Sevastos

By Mary-Ann Inglis

Mark Girdis was the youngest in a family of five brothers and three sisters, borne to Nicholas and Maria Girdis of the town of Alatsata, in Asia Minor. Mark’s older brothers were Stavros, George, John, and Christos. His sisters were Elisavet, Arete and Eugenia. Christos died at a young age. The family was a prosperous one, with substantial property, but they lost everything in the Catastrophe of 1922.

The eldest brothers, Stavros and George, came to Australia around 1923 and established a café in Brisbane at Fortitude Valley. They later brought out their other brothers including Mark to help in the operation of the cafe.

Mark worked hard in the café, learning the business and the English language and he managed to save a considerable sum of money. Soon after, in accordance with the custom of Greek immigrants at that time, he wrote to his family in Greece to find him a bride. The Girdis family approached another family from Asia Minor, the Gatzounis (Ganis) family, whom they knew quite well.

The Gatzounis family had once been a very prosperous one in Alatsata. Tobacco was one of the major exports of Asia Minor, and their grandfather, Constantine Yiamyiadakis, had owned a tobacco plantation. This was a family enterprise, which involved the growing, drying and exporting of the tobacco leaves. Constantine’s daughter Maria had married Demosthenes Gatzounis and they had four children – two sons, Constantine and George, and two daughters, Ourania and Eftihia. Both parents died as a result of the Catastrophe, leaving their children, now young adults, orphaned. These events left the siblings destitute and they had no future. The Girdis family asked Ourania if she would consent to marry their son, Mark, and she agreed.

Like many other young Greek women from those refugee families, Ourania had very little choice in her decision. She needed to marry for two reasons. In her situation, and in those times, a single woman was unable to provide for herself financially. Her upbringing, and society’s expectations dictated that she must marry. Secondly, her marriage to Mark in Australia would give her siblings the means of emigrating to Australia and the hope of a better life than was possible in Greece. Thus, Ourania’s passage to Australia was arranged and plans were made for her wedding to take place soon after her arrival.

She boarded a ship to take her to the other side of the world, to an unknown land, where people spoke a foreign tongue, to marry a man she did not know. There could be no turning back. Other Greek brides traveled with her on the same boat to the same destination and for the same purpose. Whilst their common destiny bound them together, each one carried in her heart, her private hopes, dreams and fears for the future. Both she and Mark had committed to marry, work together and raise a family before they had even met. Personal feelings came second to this commitment. And so it was for all the Greek couples marrying in those times.

On the 10^th of February 1924,they were married in a triple wedding ceremony. The three couples who wed, were Ourania Ganis and Mark Girdis, Eugenia Girdis and Con Caris, and George Girdis and Kiriakouli Roumana. Their wedding certificate indicates that Mark was 29 years of age and Ourania, 24, at the time.

Mark and Ourania went to Toowoomba looking for an opportunity to establish a café. They bought an old butcher shop in Ruthven Street, the main street of Toowoomba, cleaned and refurbished it. They turned it into a café and served light refreshments such as tea and sandwiches, milkshakes, homemade ice cream, toast and raisin bread. The family lived above the shop, and their three children, Nicholas, Evriklea and Maritsa were borne there. These were still the days of home births, where midwives assisted with the birth at home. Mark chose his elder daughter, Evriklea’s name from a story he had read in Greek mythology, because he liked it. In those days, however, immigrants were not encouraged to keep their ethnic names and usually anglicized them. People were unsure of how to anglicize the name Evriklea and so began calling her Mary – the name by which she has been known as all her life. Following Greek custom, Mark named his son, Nicholas, after his father, and his younger daughter, Maritsa, after his mother

The family prospered and after a few years they brought Ourania’s two brothers and her sister from Greece. Con and George initially worked with Mark and then went on to establish their own businesses. George opened a café in Millmeran, in a block of shops that Mark had built, and Con eventually took over Mark’s café in Toowoomba. Eftihia died as a young woman, from Tuberculosis.

During their time in Toowoomba, Mark began experimenting with confectionery making. He worked 24 hours a day, seven days a week. He would wait for the evening crowd to come in after the movie theatre closed, and serve light refreshments to his customers. At 11 pm he would close the shop and this is the time he used to experiment, making his sweets. Mary remembers he began by making a small saucepan of caramel fudge. When he sold that, he made a bigger batch of fudge. In this way he slowly grew the confectionery side of the business, relying on customer demand to guide what he made. Mary remembers the first Easter her parents made chocolate Easter eggs and how delighted they were when these sold as well. It was another line of confectionery they could add to their menu. Mark’s shop became famous for his “walking stick” candy canes and huge “bull’s eye” boiled lollies. He was a clever businessman in many ways. He made home made ice-cream and his brother in law, Con Ganis bought a horse and cart so he could sell the ice-cream door to door. And so Girdis’s Candy Store in Toowoomba was borne and grew to become a very successful business.

Around 1937, when Mary was ten years old, Mark and Ourania brought their family back to live in Brisbane. They wanted their children to grow up close to other members of the Greek Community. Mark’s business had prospered so well that he was able to retire in his early forties. He rented a house whilst he built the family home, a traditional Queenslander, which still stands today, at 214 Boundary St West End. It was a very fashionable home for its day. It had a built in bathtub – an innovation for those days (most baths were free standing on four feet). Mary remembers her friends coming home with her after school for a ‘viewing’ of their built-in bath.

Mark grew bored with retirement so he returned to the business world. He built two shops, each with a self-contained unit above, in the main strip shopping centre at 144 Boundary Street, West End. Just before World War Two, he opened a milk bar in one of the shops and sold cakes, confectionery, milkshakes and ice creams. He traded successfully during the war years. Marie recalls that her father had planned to send to America for a pasta-making machine so he could start a new line to his business, but was prevented from doing so by the War.

Around this time (1940), he bought a holiday home along Marine Parade, on the waterfront at Labrador on the Gold Coast, and he named the house ‘St Nicholas’. It was a beautiful old Queenslander, with six bedrooms and a large balcony overlooking the sea. The house originally belonged to a Queensland grazier – a wealthy family with servants. The house had a small detached dwelling at the rear, which had originally served as maid’s quarters and a kitchen. The house had been built before indoor plumbing was available. Mark renovated this detached building and installed bathroom and toilet facilities. He installed a kitchen and telephone in the main house and linked the two buildings with a covered walkway. The house must have been bought furnished, because as a child, I can remember brass beds with porcelain inserts in every bedroom. There were also porcelain washbasins on marble stands with matching water jugs for washing the face, neck and hands. In the large kitchen area I remember a long cedar table with white porcelain casters. It was so large that the family would use it to play table tennis.

Mary has special memories of her father on holidays at the beach house. A very dear friend and relation, Margariti Karistinos, worked at Theodore’s Café in Nerang Street Southport. When Mark and Ourania were on holidays, Margariti would rise every morning at four am, and cycle from his home at Surfer’s Paradise to Labrador. There, he and Mark would sit on the front balcony overlooking the sea. They sipped their hot sweet Greek coffee and read poetry to each other as they watched the first rays of the sun rising over the horizon and the sky gradually lighting up with the first hues of daylight. Margariti strummed gentle music on his mandolin and they sang softly together. Then at half past six, Margariti would mount his bicycle again and ride back to Southport to start his day’s work at the café.

Mark’s great love of music meant that each of the children received a musical education. They took lessons at a Catholic School at Highgate Hill. Together the family formed a musical group with Mark playing the violin, Nick the flute, Mary the piano, and Marie the violin. Mark sent for sheet music from Greece and the family group played all the favourite Greek folk songs at parties and gatherings. Relatives and friends loved this music of their homeland and loved to reminisce about the ‘old days’ and sing along. During World War Two, the family joined other musicians in playing their music on radio station 4BH to raise money for the war effort. They also played at the Greek Concerts that were regularly held at the School of Arts at West End.

Mark loved reading and literature. These were a great passion for him, and he built up a library of books on literature, religion, philosophy and poetry, all in the English language. As a teenager, I discovered this treasury of books, which had belonged to my grandfather. He had read wonderful novels such as ‘Dear and Glorious Physician’, by Taylor Caldwell, and ‘The Sorrows of Satan’ by Marie Corelli. There were also books on religion and Rosicrucianism (a philosophy he investigated but rejected in the end). I read them all avidly. I thought it was quite amazing that he was able to read this standard of literature in English, a second language he had learned by himself, without any formal teaching

I have been told that my grandmother, Ourania, was a quiet, gentle, elegant lady. And so she seems to me from her photos. She embroidered beautiful tablecloths and napkins, and crocheted tablecloths and doilies for her daughters’ “prika” (trousseau). She also did all the family sewing and embroidery. Whilst the family had enjoyed financial security, Mary remembers that money was never spent carelessly.

Ourania suffered for many years with poor health caused by kidney disease. Mark sought the best medical advice available, but medical treatment in the 1940’s was unable to help her. Mark engaged a housekeeper and they watched as Ourania’s health continued to decline. However, whilst their mother’s health was fading, Mark suddenly died of a pulmonary embolism (blood clot to the lungs). He was just 53. And six, sad months later, Ourania passed on, at the age of 48. The family was bereft.

The details of my grandparents’ lives before they came to Australia are very sketchy. All the civil records relating to the existence of their families, and the properties owned by them in Asia Minor, were deliberately destroyed by the Turks at the time of the Catastrophe. The family cannot establish where their forbears lived nor can they trace their Family Trees at all. Technically, our families have only existed from 1922 onwards. No one knows what happened to Ourania’s parents except that they died during or after the Catastrophe, leaving their four children orphaned.

The events they lived through were so traumatic, that neither Mark nor Ourania ever wanted to speak of them to their children. And their deaths were so premature and unexpected, that they never had the chance to pass on their family history to the next generation. These are the inequities of Life.

In their lifetime each of them faced many trials – the First Expulsion of the Greeks from Asia Minor in 1914, the First World War, the Catastrophe of 1922, the flight from their homeland, the loss of all their worldly possessions, the loss of loved ones, migration to a foreign country, the Great Depression and the Second World War.

I have no memory of my grandparents. They died when I was just eighteen months old, and my parents married barely three years. But still, there is much that I have learned about them. I know that they lived through tumultuous times. I know that their lives were very tough. I know that they endured and suffered a great deal. But I see that through it all they maintained their values of faith, and family life. As a couple, they put the past behind them and started life anew here in Australia, to give their children a secure future. They worked hard but they also strove to find the beauty in life wherever they could, through things such as music and literature. And they always sought to do the very best they could, for their children.

POSTCRIPT

Nicholas and Clara Girdis live in Vancouver, Canada, and have a daughter, Estella and two grandchildren.

Mary and Tony Miller live in Brisbane and have three daughters – Mary-Ann, Lorraine and Eleen. They have eight grandchildren.

Marie and Jim Sevastos live in Melbourne and have two daughters, Leah and Robyn, who have given them four grandchildren.

Family Photos