'Wild Colonial Greeks' by Peter Prineas, reviewed by Louise Wilson Jan 28, 2021
'Wild Colonial Greeks' by Peter Prineas
Reviewed by Louise Wilson in Goodreads, Jan 28, 2021
I opened this book with a considerable degree of curiosity.
Having closely studied the experiences of Australia’s earliest convict
settlers, I wondered how the author would tackle this topic and what he
would unearth.
The title ‘Wild Colonial Greeks’ is a nice play on Frank Clune’s ‘Wild Colonial Boys’ but the Greeks in this fascinating book were not wild boys – they just lived in wild places. We follow their various adventures during Australia’s tough frontier period in the second half of the 19th century.
I found it fascinating to learn about the different range of hardships suffered by Greek immigrants. Some of it was of their own making, if and when the ‘Mediterranean temperament’ clashed with expected societal norms not understood by the newcomers. But some of it was definite prejudice, of the kind still seen in Australia with each new wave of immigrants from a different place. Prejudice in the 19th century incorporated the laid-back but suspicious-about-difference attitudes of the lower socio-economic groups and the arrogant class-consciousness of officialdom and the squattocracy.
Author Peter Prineas OAM says ‘It’s hard to believe that no Greek – not even a sailor – set foot in Australia until 41 years after the First Fleet’, 1829, when seven pirate-convicts arrived. Through his diligent research he identifies a Greek named George Manual, a native of Corfu, who arrived in 1823.
By around 1868 a visiting Greek Orthodox monk named Christophoros claimed to have met 500 Greeks here, mostly in Sydney and Melbourne but also scattered around the countryside. In ‘Wild Colonial Greeks’ we meet very few of those city dwellers but an interesting assortment of the latter who often ended up in Queensland.
Analysing newspaper coverage, the author identifies three phases of ‘Greekdom’ in Australia – the ‘song and story’ phase, replete with references to the Greek classical period. It reminded me that elements of this remained until well into the 20th century, when the ABC Children’s Hour ran the Argonaut’s Club, whose members received names from Greek mythology. Just before the gold rush began, Greeks had slipped from their heroic pedestal and now were often described or nicknamed as ‘George the Greek’. From the late 19th century people from Mediterranean countries began to be described as Dagoes, a term still common in my own childhood in Sydney.
We meet a number of Greeks in this book, including Diamantina, the high-status wife of the first governor of Queensland, Sir George Bowen. However the author focuses our attention on five self-contained pen portraits of interesting Greeks from the ‘George the Greek’ phase—none of whom were named George. The stories are based on accurate and diligent research using the invaluable resources of Trove to access historic newspaper coverage of the events described.
This is not the author’s first book of its kind, as he has previously published ‘Katsehamos and the Great Idea: A true Story of Greeks and Australians in the early 20th century’. He draws on another of his works, ‘Britain’s Greek Islands: Kythera and the Ionian Islands 1809 to 1864’, to give context to the background of the five individuals featured in ‘Wild Colonial Greeks’.
The first, Nicholas Millar, of indeterminate origins but described as Greek, was the victim of cross-cultural misunderstanding when he was killed in 1861 by the Aborigines on Shaw Island in Queensland’s Whitsunday Islands.
Timoleon Vlasto, born around 1825 into an influential Greek family from Chios, stole Greek coins from the British Museum and arrived in Tasmania as a convict in 1851. He soon escaped to the mainland, married in Sydney in 1853 and then disappeared from the records, presumably making his way back to Europe.
Eugenios Genatas, born around 1832 on Corfu, arrived as a free settler in 1860 and headed for Queensland. He had a short career based at Peak Downs as an officer with the Queensland Native Mounted Police, dealing with bloodthirsty squatters who used the term ‘dispersal’ as the accepted euphemism for dealing with troublesome Aborigines. In this role he has been falsely maligned without evidence. Afterwards he lived briefly in Sydney, working as a language teacher until he disappears from the records in 1864.
Andreas Lagogiannis, born about 1820 in the Greek port of Patras, arrived in Melbourne in 1854 and briefly made money as a merchant selling goods to Melbourne’s nouveau riche. He tried farming for a few years and then had a long career as a publican in Port Melbourne and later in Bendigo, where he died in 1879. Melbourne is still a very Greek town.
Spiridion Candiottis, born about 1824 on Corfu, arrived in Melbourne in 1853 and practised as a doctor for a few years in Emerald Hill (South Melbourne). The Victorian goldfields then utilized his medical services before he moved in 1861 to Forbes and Sydney in NSW. Ten years after arriving in Australia he moved to Queensland, where he spent a year at Rockhampton before his final move westwards to Clermont, where he practised as a doctor until 1890. In this very long chapter (some sub-headings would help the reader) we come face to face with the gruesome history of medical conditions and treatments on the goldfields and in outback Australia. Candiottis, a capable doctor willing to commit long-term to the town of Clermont, was unjustly maligned by a newspaperman who seems to have been somewhat unhinged and refused to recognise the value of this doctor’s service to an isolated outback community. The people of Clermont need to know this story.
In the process of learning about the lives of these early Greek settlers, we also learn a great deal about the gold rushes in the eastern states and some distressing interactions with the Aboriginal population. The author paints outback life vividly with sentences like ‘they negotiated the hundred miles and more of wheel ruts that passed for roads’. It’s amazing what privations our early settlers took in their stride, especially the women folk. The book weaves the expressive language and societal attitudes of the 19th century into the narrative, with regular flashes of humour, including some injected by the author, whose dry wit is on display.
The author is Australian-born of Greek parents. He has seamlessly blended his legal training, his interest in history, his extensive academic knowledge of his own Greek heritage and his long involvement with the environmental movement in Australia to produce a very readable book of Australian history. ‘Wild Colonial Greeks’ has a readership well beyond Australia’s Greek community.
The title ‘Wild Colonial Greeks’ is a nice play on Frank Clune’s ‘Wild Colonial Boys’ but the Greeks in this fascinating book were not wild boys – they just lived in wild places. We follow their various adventures during Australia’s tough frontier period in the second half of the 19th century.
I found it fascinating to learn about the different range of hardships suffered by Greek immigrants. Some of it was of their own making, if and when the ‘Mediterranean temperament’ clashed with expected societal norms not understood by the newcomers. But some of it was definite prejudice, of the kind still seen in Australia with each new wave of immigrants from a different place. Prejudice in the 19th century incorporated the laid-back but suspicious-about-difference attitudes of the lower socio-economic groups and the arrogant class-consciousness of officialdom and the squattocracy.
Author Peter Prineas OAM says ‘It’s hard to believe that no Greek – not even a sailor – set foot in Australia until 41 years after the First Fleet’, 1829, when seven pirate-convicts arrived. Through his diligent research he identifies a Greek named George Manual, a native of Corfu, who arrived in 1823.
By around 1868 a visiting Greek Orthodox monk named Christophoros claimed to have met 500 Greeks here, mostly in Sydney and Melbourne but also scattered around the countryside. In ‘Wild Colonial Greeks’ we meet very few of those city dwellers but an interesting assortment of the latter who often ended up in Queensland.
Analysing newspaper coverage, the author identifies three phases of ‘Greekdom’ in Australia – the ‘song and story’ phase, replete with references to the Greek classical period. It reminded me that elements of this remained until well into the 20th century, when the ABC Children’s Hour ran the Argonaut’s Club, whose members received names from Greek mythology. Just before the gold rush began, Greeks had slipped from their heroic pedestal and now were often described or nicknamed as ‘George the Greek’. From the late 19th century people from Mediterranean countries began to be described as Dagoes, a term still common in my own childhood in Sydney.
We meet a number of Greeks in this book, including Diamantina, the high-status wife of the first governor of Queensland, Sir George Bowen. However the author focuses our attention on five self-contained pen portraits of interesting Greeks from the ‘George the Greek’ phase—none of whom were named George. The stories are based on accurate and diligent research using the invaluable resources of Trove to access historic newspaper coverage of the events described.
This is not the author’s first book of its kind, as he has previously published ‘Katsehamos and the Great Idea: A true Story of Greeks and Australians in the early 20th century’. He draws on another of his works, ‘Britain’s Greek Islands: Kythera and the Ionian Islands 1809 to 1864’, to give context to the background of the five individuals featured in ‘Wild Colonial Greeks’.
The first, Nicholas Millar, of indeterminate origins but described as Greek, was the victim of cross-cultural misunderstanding when he was killed in 1861 by the Aborigines on Shaw Island in Queensland’s Whitsunday Islands.
Timoleon Vlasto, born around 1825 into an influential Greek family from Chios, stole Greek coins from the British Museum and arrived in Tasmania as a convict in 1851. He soon escaped to the mainland, married in Sydney in 1853 and then disappeared from the records, presumably making his way back to Europe.
Eugenios Genatas, born around 1832 on Corfu, arrived as a free settler in 1860 and headed for Queensland. He had a short career based at Peak Downs as an officer with the Queensland Native Mounted Police, dealing with bloodthirsty squatters who used the term ‘dispersal’ as the accepted euphemism for dealing with troublesome Aborigines. In this role he has been falsely maligned without evidence. Afterwards he lived briefly in Sydney, working as a language teacher until he disappears from the records in 1864.
Andreas Lagogiannis, born about 1820 in the Greek port of Patras, arrived in Melbourne in 1854 and briefly made money as a merchant selling goods to Melbourne’s nouveau riche. He tried farming for a few years and then had a long career as a publican in Port Melbourne and later in Bendigo, where he died in 1879. Melbourne is still a very Greek town.
Spiridion Candiottis, born about 1824 on Corfu, arrived in Melbourne in 1853 and practised as a doctor for a few years in Emerald Hill (South Melbourne). The Victorian goldfields then utilized his medical services before he moved in 1861 to Forbes and Sydney in NSW. Ten years after arriving in Australia he moved to Queensland, where he spent a year at Rockhampton before his final move westwards to Clermont, where he practised as a doctor until 1890. In this very long chapter (some sub-headings would help the reader) we come face to face with the gruesome history of medical conditions and treatments on the goldfields and in outback Australia. Candiottis, a capable doctor willing to commit long-term to the town of Clermont, was unjustly maligned by a newspaperman who seems to have been somewhat unhinged and refused to recognise the value of this doctor’s service to an isolated outback community. The people of Clermont need to know this story.
In the process of learning about the lives of these early Greek settlers, we also learn a great deal about the gold rushes in the eastern states and some distressing interactions with the Aboriginal population. The author paints outback life vividly with sentences like ‘they negotiated the hundred miles and more of wheel ruts that passed for roads’. It’s amazing what privations our early settlers took in their stride, especially the women folk. The book weaves the expressive language and societal attitudes of the 19th century into the narrative, with regular flashes of humour, including some injected by the author, whose dry wit is on display.
The author is Australian-born of Greek parents. He has seamlessly blended his legal training, his interest in history, his extensive academic knowledge of his own Greek heritage and his long involvement with the environmental movement in Australia to produce a very readable book of Australian history. ‘Wild Colonial Greeks’ has a readership well beyond Australia’s Greek community.
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