| Larry Schwartz |
| OVER the years, Martha Zamanis has found it reassuring to go back and back to Station Pier. She was just eight when she came out in August 1961 with her mother and two younger sisters to be with their father who had left their native Greek island of Lemnos, four years earlier. A policeman in the old country, he was working as a laborer on the railways. Her first Australian home was in South Melbourne. Mrs Zamanis now lives only blocks away from Station Pier, a landmark that exerts a fascination to her own daughters – Elizabeth, 19, and Kathryn, 12. “Station Pier is a very sentimental part of my life,” says Mrs Zamanis, who arrived close to midnight on a liner called the Patris, after a voyage in which she had entertained herself by reading `Little Red Riding Hood’ over and over again, in Greek. “I talk to my children about it and they ask me questions until the cows come home.” She can tell her daughters of the excitement on that sleepless night before they disembarked. The care their mother took to prepare her young daughters to meet their father. The identical tweed coats they wore to disembark, the white socks, the black patent- leather shoes. As the ship drew close to Station Pier, families huddled together, and friends of recent weeks were farewelled. The crush of people on the deck. The shock of a crowd so big. Her mother grasping at them in the throng as they left the ship. “That’s what you can’t take out of your mind. Just the amount of people waiting.” As with others on the pier, her father had not come alone but with a group of friends. He had sent back photographs and written that there was plenty of work. In Australia you were free. Mrs Zamanis would regularly go down to watch the ships arrive and the process of migration repeated. People in the community were forever discussing who was bringing whom over. She would go down to Station Pier and watch the embraces and the weeping that had featured in her own arrival. She would often sit across the way from Station Pier with her father. “Look, remember, we arrived just there,” he would say. Martha Zamanis had heard that Australia was a vast country. Still, it was a surprise to see so few buildings beyond the boat sheds, so little activity. Compared to the bustle at Athens, the port seemed empty and uninteresting. Desolate, even. THE SUNDAY AGE, 03-Jul-1994 |
Larry Schwartz Writer 