By Hazel Lekkas
I have a confession to make. Buninyong Street in Yarraville once housed a fugitive. My father. I know, I know. I lied to readers of The Westsider when I claimed in a contribution featured in 2024’s March edition, that my folks were law-abiding citizens. Well, my father was not. But he soon proved that he was. This is how the story of my dad, the escapee, unfolded in the West.
It was a wintry Tuesday in July, 1972. My father was 19. He had finally arrived in Australia after three years travelling the world. He had worked as a kitchenhand on one of Onassis’s cargo ships transporting crude oil; France, Holland, Japan, South Africa. It was a trip of a lifetime, having joined the crew, aged 16, and getting paid to sight-see places he had only ever heard about. Excitement. Independence. Longing. Longing to join his two brothers who had earlier settled in Yarraville. They had left their village in north-eastern Greece where farming life lent itself to few drachmas in one’s pocket. Yarraville, on the other hand, was handing out job opportunities like campaign flyers at a polling centre, and the prospect of settling down to build a new working life was sweeter than honey (but nowhere near sweeter than the honey he married in 1978.). Oh, and Yarraville was not enforcing military duty on its young men unlike back in Greece which my father was avoiding as the lover and not the fighter that he is.
My father decided his time as a crew member of the vessel aptly named, ‘Australis’, was no more. Instead of returning to the cargo ship, docked at Port Melbourne, to resume his seaman duties, he found his way to Yarraville and reunited with his brothers. He left most of his personal belongings on the ship to avoid being questioned by the crew. And just like that, he was a ‘prohibited immigrant’.
In less than a week of hiding at Buninyong Street, my father was ushered on public transport by his older brother one morning, told to stay close to a group of white clad workers, learnt his first English word, “butcher”, and was employed as a meat worker at Borthwicks on Francis Street, Yarraville. And just like that, he was an illegal employee.
Buninyong Street offered only short-term refuge. Immigration officers soon came knocking on the door of his brother’s house on more than one occasion. In the dead of one unkind icy night, he fled, unseen, barefoot in pyjamas. While his brothers and sister-in-law were left behind to be interrogated, my father, without any bearings of Yarraville’s street map, found his way on the nearby train tracks to hide.
By the end of 1972, he left Buninyong Street to seek protection in a house purchased by his oldest brother on Deakin St, Yarraville. He was never caught. Australia granted amnesty to illegal migrants from 1974 to 1980, as part of the government’s multiculturalism policy. In 1976, my father was free to roam the streets (and train tracks) of the West, being granted a Resident Status.
After his stint as a meat worker, he slipped into other jobs in local industries then landed a job at a bakery on Somerville Road, Yarraville. With pockets full of dollars, he bought a house in Yarraville and by 1977, found his jar of honey (my mother) and headed to Sunshine West in 1980 to operate a little hardware shop, with wife and daughter (me) in tow.
In 2016, I was honoured to witness my father become an Australian Citizen. He held his hand up high, apologetically for having entered Australia illegally but proud to call the western suburbs his home. And just like that, my father was recognised as a law-abiding citizen who, once filled with fear of being captured and deported, quickly turned himself into a self-assured, honest, hardworking resident who raised and educated a daughter (and son), by selling hardware supplies, to share his story about being a Westie; determined and diligent, like most, but a ship deserter, like few.
