Life After Marriage
On their return,
Xanthoula took up her new duties as wife, housekeeper of the Wrigley home and
caretaker of two elderly men: her father-in-law, seventy-two years old and her
brother-in-law George, fifty-two. Tom
Wrigley hadn’t had an easy life and, at his age, he didn’t enjoy good health. He had fought in two wars and had worked hard
in factories for most of his life. Even when
Xanthoula came he still worked as a part-time watchman in a factory in
Yarraville. Although only fifty-two
years old, George had serious health problems and had already retired from
working in the railway depot. He was
suffering from respiratory difficulties having been gassed as a young soldier in
WWI, and he had had a stroke which nearly left him paralyzed before Xanthoula
arrived. Fortunately he had recovered
well enough to walk -- with a slight limp, but he was able to walk to the shops
and take care of quite a few things in daily life. He was also partially deaf, probably the
result of working for many years in a noisy environment at the railways. But he was a truly gentle soul, had never
married, and indeed was very helpful to Xanthoula in her first years in
Yarraville. He would go shopping with
her and do whatever he could around the house.
After 1952, when the first child arrived, George was often seen in the
neighborhood pushing the baby’s pram, and later taking the little boy for a walk. He spent a lot of time with little John,
freeing Xanthoula to do her work around the house. John learned to walk holding Uncle George’s
finger. A deep bond was formed between
them and, many years later, it was John who took care of him for quite a while
when Xanthoula and Bert took a trip to Greece
George lived
with Xanthoula and Bert until I arrived from Greece in April 1955. Some months before I arrived, Bert had helped
him find and buy a nice block of land up in the hills of Melbourne
Soon after the
wedding, Bert decided to join the Victoria Police Force. He applied, was accepted and took the
training required. Not that he needed
that much training, at least not on the practical side of the job. But the duties of a city policeman required
him to know rules and regulations which he didn’t need to know in the army or
in his fighting with the Greek guerillas, or in his commando special training
which he took before he went to Borneo.
The Victoria Police Force must have been happy to welcome a veteran with
experience, especially as he turned out to be very good at all the other subjects
they had to take as part of the police force training. Xanthoula remembers young recruits coming to
the house to get help from him in English, and he sat working with them for
hours. After a break of more than four years in the army and overseas, Bert had
gone back to reading again any time he wasn’t working or doing jobs around the
house. He had an excellent command of the
English language, especially compared to young people who were coming out of
high school. He was about 32 years old
when he went through the police force training, much older than most other
recruits, but he sailed through everything.
Xanthoula remembers going with pride to his graduation ceremony holding
John in her arms. For the graduation
ball, one of Bert’s sisters came to baby sit.
In 1954, after I
had finished high school, I still wanted to go and be with Xanthoula. For her part, Xanthoula hadn’t forgotten that
she had promised to send for me. The
sponsorship papers were submitted and the application was approved by the
Australian government. I could leave as
a legal immigrant to join my sister in Melbourne. In the meantime, life in Greece had somewhat
improved, at least there were no longer military trials and executions, but
prospects for young people were few and our family was still ‘stigmatized’ by
the execution of our father and the continued branding of our family as leftist
if not communist. The ‘Security’ was
still making decisions about people’s lives, and you couldn’t get a job or
leave the country unless you were able to obtain a “certificate of social
beliefs”. It was a piece of paper issued
by the Security certifying that you were not of the leftist persuasion. This is where my papers got stuck, as the
Australian Immigration Department required a certificate from the police that I
had no criminal record. And indeed at
barely eighteen years old I had no criminal record, but the Security
interpreted that notion somewhat differently.
Almost a year
went by and the desired piece of paper hadn’t come. I finally decided to do what Eleni had done
at the time of her second arrest: I presented myself to the chief of the local
Security Office in Katerini, the town where I was born, and I demanded an
explanation why my application for this piece of paper was not being approved.
I remember a long and pale face with an ironic smile saying that the reason was
because I belonged to a family well-known for its leftist beliefs. He said that my father had been labeled as a
communist and was executed, and that my eldest sister had been tried by a
military court. I remember feeling the
anger welling up in me, especially when he mentioned my father. I reminded him that my father had been
executed by the enemy who had invaded Greece, that he was a hero and I was
proud of what he stood for. I went on
saying that he was repeating the same old stuff we had heard before, and that
my sister was, since 1952, a respected teacher in his community, probably
teaching his own children in high school.
I pointed out that she had been acquitted in the trial and that, if the
‘higher-ups’ had thought she was worthy of their trust, since they allowed her
to teach, then he should show the same trust towards me and allow me to leave. Surely, I couldn’t be more dangerous than she
was! And what were they afraid of? That I would contaminate Australian society
with liberal ideas? Australia was liberal enough, and Thank God, not
a police state like Greece
I was eighteen
years-old and I had ‘lost’ it, as they say. I was so angry, I stood up and left
without waiting for a response. Back at
my sister Eleni’s place, I broke down thinking that I had ruined my chances of
ever leaving the country. Strangely
enough, I was called the very next day to go and collect the clearance
certificate! I marched in, picked it up
and left without thanking them.
Mother looked
very sad but quite resigned this time. In
my excitement, I didn’t want to dwell on her sadness, but for many years to
follow I suffered from guilt feelings that I too had left her. My passage was booked, first class cabin (!)
on the Arcadia, which I was to board neither
in Italy nor in the Greek port of Piraeus but at the very southern tip of the
Peloponnese, in the historically famous Navarino Bay. As it turned out it was the ship that
literally picked me up! The rendezvous was for late March 1955. My brother Stefanos accompanied me all the
way from Katerini, crossing the whole country from north to south, first by
train to Athens, then by bus to the town of Kalamata. The trip took almost three days. There wasn’t a port where a 30,000-ton ship
could dock in Kalamata. So on a very
early misty morning, a small fishing boat with an outboard motor took me, with
my brother beside me holding my hand, quite a way into Navarino Bay to where
the big ocean liner had anchored waiting for me. I had to climb up on a special ladder that
was lowered, and my small suitcase was carried up by a cabin boy dressed in sparkling
white clothes, black bow tie and white gloves. I looked down as the little boat was leaving
with my brother in it and I felt like a forlorn child. My heart felt like jumping out of my body to
go back with him... I wonder now why I
never asked him later how he felt back then.
I was the only
passenger the “Arcadia” picked up
from Greece on its maiden voyage, probably because I was travelling first
class. I couldn’t believe that Xanthoula
and Bert had actually booked a first-class passage for me! I was shy even to look at the well-dressed British
passengers going down to the luxurious dining-room. Many of the women wore long gowns and men
wore black suits for dinner. Did I feel that
I didn’t belong there? You can guess the
answer. Fortunately, one passenger, an
Irish priest, must have sensed how I felt and made a point of coming to speak
to me. He spoke some French and we spent
many hours playing scrabble with French words.
And no, I wasn’t chosen ‘Miss
Arcadia’. So far as I remember,
there was no such event on that ship. It
was probably a tradition only on the
Greek ships.
This isn’t the
place to continue with my own experiences and feelings during that voyage, but
I wanted to record the extraordinary fact that a poor immigrant girl was
travelling first class on the maiden voyage of a new ocean liner full of people
who seemed to be on a luxury cruise to Australia. If there were other immigrants travelling,
they were in Economy Class, and there was no communication between the
two. And although it isn’t my story, I
also want to write about some of the things that Bert and Xanthoula did for me,
which show their generosity and their caring.
Making their portrait as complete as possible is the main aim and some
of these details seem relevant to me.
As both of them admitted
to me more than once in later years, they were both concerned when they came to
pick me up from the ship which docked on the same wharf as did the ‘Cyrenia’ five years earlier. They said that I looked so thin and so lost,
with long hair tied back and flat shoes. They wondered how they could help me
to become more like a ‘normal’ young girl.
Xanthoula set to work immediately.
She took me to have my hair cut, bought me new dresses, a new light blue
coat, shiny black leather shoes with medium heels to get me used to them, and a
bag to match. They also made sure I ate as much as
possible. Within a month or so, I had
put on some weight, wore lipstick -- which felt very strange to begin with and
made me self-conscious --, and learned to walk on higher heels. Xanthoula remembers that I made it clear I
wanted to learn English as quickly as possible, so we agreed to speak English
at home between us. She started teaching
me the daily things. We went food shopping
together, making every occasion, every outing a lesson. Bert gave me a red pocket-book size Greek-English
dictionary, which Xanthoula still has in her desk. I carried it with me all the time and looked
up every word I came across. I also gave
myself the task of learning twenty new words a day, and continued testing
myself on them until I had them memorized. Xanthoula would take me to the local cinema every
now and then to see films so that I could get used to listening to English.
Many immigrants
lived in Yarraville because of the proximity to the factories and the
possibility of jobs. Bert found out that
the local elementary school offered free English lessons at night for
immigrants and Xanthoula took me to meet the local teacher. He was a nice gentleman, very patient, trying
to teach a fairly large group of people who on the whole had little education
in their own language and who came in tired from a day’s work. I attended the
night classes regularly but after a while there was little I could learn as
this was a class for beginners aiming to teach the basics. Every time new people joined the class the
teacher would start from the beginning. I
gave him to understand that I needed to move forward a little faster, as I
planned to go to the University. He looked
at me with a bit of a smile, probably thinking that this was too ambitious for
an immigrant girl. Anyway, I left the
class and continued to study on my own, with books from home and my dictionary. It was then that I fully realized the value
of having been taught strict rules by the French nuns. They had for years insisted on grammar,
verbs, and the structure of sentences.
All of that helped me to learn English faster than most immigrants and
without attending any other special classes.
Within a year I managed to enroll at the University. The details of that experience are part of my
story… But I could add here that five
years later, when I received my degree from Melbourne University, Xanthoula and
I went to visit the local school teacher.
I wanted my sister to be proud of me and indeed she was. The teacher was surprised but pleased and
congratulated me for my perseverance. I
remember it felt good to be able to prove to him that immigrants could get an
education in Australia if they really wanted to.
During those
early years both Xanthoula and Bert gave me a lot of encouragement and moral
support in my plans to study at the University.
But their finances were very limited with just one person working and a
second child on the way. ‘Grandpa’ Wrigley was also still living with them. They had already spent a substantial sum for
my trip and I found out later that they had actually borrowed most of it from
Bert’s brother Eric. They were now slowly
paying it off. When I asked them why on
earth they had paid for a first class cabin for me, they said that, given the
conditions under which I grew up, they wanted me to have a really nice trip
over. They had also repainted and refurnished Uncle
George’s room which became mine, and also paid the fees for me to attend a
technical college in the neighborhood where I learned to type. Now I had to earn some money in order to pay
for University fees, train and tram fares, books, etc. My English was improving fast, and with the
typing skills I had acquired I was ready to enter the work force at the end of
my fifth month in Melbourne.
In order for me
not to have a long commute, Bert had the idea of speaking to the owners of a
factory just across the street from the house.
It was called Australian Porcelain Insulator Company and manufactured
porcelain insulators for electricity. It
was a family-run business and the owners knew Bert and the Wrigley family from
across the street. Bert explained that I
was still fresh from Greece and that my English wasn’t perfect, but he could
vouch for me as a serious young lady. I
went across for them to meet me and I was immediately hired as a kind of
secretary-typist who also answered the phones in the general office. I was very lucky as the owner, Mr. John
Crowe, had studied ancient Greek at Melbourne University and treated me with
great courtesy and gentleness. He was
impressed that I could speak French. He
brought me a very large Greek-English English-Greek dictionary, which I used at
all times, and my English kept improving by the day. The manager, Mr. Russell,
was also a nice gentleman. He made an
effort to speak slowly and clearly when he was dictating a letter, and joked
about how our accents were similar -- he was from Scotland and I remember that
we both rolled our Rs. Mr. Crowe’s two
sons, Peter and Malcolm, treated me kindly and were very helpful when I started
taking night courses at the University.
They took turns in making a detour going home to take me there so that I
wouldn’t be late for class. Without
their help I wouldn’t have made it.
There simply wasn’t enough time after work to catch the train into the
city, and then take the tram to Melbourne University. So I had great support from everyone in what
they all considered a noble effort on my part to educate myself.
Classes were twice
a week during the first year, and on those nights, when I came home late, my
dinner would be waiting for me on a plate kept warm, and Xanthoula was always
up to ask me how things were going.
There is no way I could have done what I did without the understanding
and the support from Xanthoula and Bert, and the least I can do is to
acknowledge it here. Through these
actions they both showed their generous and caring nature. These early studies, for which they both
stood by me, laid the foundations for my academic career in the USA many years
later.
In 1956, a year
after I arrived, a second boy was born to Xanthoula, Michael. Grandfather was declining by now and he
needed more attention and caretaking. He
had been a smoker all his life, and I could hear him cough for a long time in
the early mornings. After all the glamor
of the arrival and the wedding, Xanthoula had to settle into an old house,
though improved with some renovations. For
the first five years, she took care of two older men who needed their rooms
cleaned, their washing done and their meals cooked. One would expect that, under such
circumstances, a young girl could have become somewhat depressed and
unhappy. At least I think I would
have... I remember thinking quite a few times that this wasn’t the best
environment for a young and beautiful bride.
It was fine that Bert wasn’t well off, she knew all about that kind of
hardship and trying to make ends meet.
The last ten years in Greece
I asked her to
remember how she had felt then, having to live with and take care of two old
men, and if she regretted at any time having stayed. I was surprised with what she had to say: ‘It
seemed natural to me. They were family,
that was all there was to it. It was
their home and I had accepted to come into it. I knew the situation before I
married Bert. Someone had to take care
of them, so why not me? And everyone was
so nice and appreciative, I was really happy to do it.’
Before I arrived
in Melbourne at the age of eighteen, I suppose that I had an idealized vision
of how my sister lived in Australia. I
loved all the newspaper photos and the wedding photos that Xanthoula had sent
us. My sister was a star! Later, when I saw photos of the outside of
their simple weatherboard house, it was a bit of a surprise. I was only eighteen
years old when I arrived and there were many things for which I wasn’t
prepared. For example, although I had
lived with my own grandfather for many years, I wasn’t quite prepared to be
with an old man like ‘Grandpa’ Wrigley. To
begin with, I couldn’t communicate with him at all as I had no English. And our own grandfather was so different from
him! I grew up with a robust non-smoking and non-drinking grandfather who was
full of life and could do everything. Grandpa Wrigley was thin and weak, coughed
all the time, smoked cigarettes which he rolled himself, and he liked to have a
lot of rum in his tea. Both smells of
tobacco and alcohol were unpleasant to me, but during the four or so years I
lived in Yarraville with them, I never heard Xanthoula make a comment, lose
patience or complain about it. She gave
the old man haircuts, kept his room and his clothes clean and, having learned
that he liked blood sausage and tripe, she would buy those things to cook
especially for him. I can understand why
he loved Xanthoula and preferred to live with her rather than with his own
daughters! In 1959, he declined even
further and, although he never became bedridden, Xanthoula had to ultimately
wash him and help him get dressed. One
morning he asked her to prepare him and then quietly died in her arms. Those four years of shared life with my
sister in a modest home in a working class neighborhood of Melbourne, witnessing
daily her warm and generous nature and her untiring caring for everyone, have
given me a respect and an admiration for her that I will carry towards her all
my life.
In the meantime,
with the two children growing, Bert wanted to give them a better quality of
life, with more nature and cleaner air.
He and his brother Eric had bought two adjacent blocks of land in an
outer suburb of Melbourne. Vermont still had tall trees, birds and even some
wild life like rabbits, lizards, etc.
Eric had already built a house there but it wasn’t convenient for him to
live that far away because of his work.
So the house was empty, not quite finished but inhabitable. After ‘Grandpa’
died, Bert and Xanthoula decided to move
out there, live in brother Eric’s house and start building their own next
door. By then, I had a scholarship that
allowed me to study full-time and work only part-time as an interpreter in the
courts. I said goodbye to the good
people of the Australian Porcelain Insulator Company and moved out to Vermont
with Bert, Xanthoula, John and Michael. I
loved living out there, waking up with the noise of the kookaburras and the
bell birds, stepping outside both front and back doors and smelling the scent
of eucalyptus trees. I organized my
classes and commuted to the University by train and tram. It was a long walk up to Heatherdale station
but I was happy to do it with nature all around. This lasted a year. For the senior year of my studies, I was
awarded a residential scholarship by the Women’s College on campus and I moved
there for the academic year 1960-1961. Living
on campus, being able to just walk to the library and my classes, come back for
ready meals at the College, and participate in that life with other fellow
students was a truly wonderful and memorable experience for me. And I could still go and spend the weekends
with Xanthoula, Bert and the boys.
In 1961, exactly
ten years after Xanthoula sailed on the ‘Cyrenia’
to come to Australia, and with two little boys, John eight years old and Michael
not quite five, Bert felt that it was time for her to go back and see her
family in Greece, and for the boys to have an experience of their Greek roots. He couldn’t go himself, but Xanthoula could go
with the two boys and stay as long as she liked. Money for the tickets was gathered by a common
effort through our mother, our brother Stefanos and Eleni, and Bert who had
saved enough for some spending money. I
had graduated and had been awarded a French government scholarship to continue my
studies in Paris. I was preparing to
sail back to Europe myself, so it was great! Xanthoula, the boys and I would travel
together on the Greek boat ‘Patris’
and would have a full family reunion during the summer of 1961 before I was to
start my studies in Paris Greece Greece
The decision was
made, the passages were booked and Bert was to live by himself for a whole year
allowing Xanthoula to have this time with her family and old friends in
Greece. It wasn’t a small sacrifice on
his part, a whole year of living alone, but he insisted that he was happy and
that he was quite capable of taking care of himself. Generosity was the essence of Bert’s
character, never putting himself first.
He enjoyed Xanthoula’s happiness at being reunited with her family in
Greece and pleased that her family could see how happy and well-looked after
she and the boys were. It took twelve
more years before he could make it to Greece himself with leave from his work,
going alone in his turn while Xanthoula stayed home. On that occasion he was gone for three
months. They went to Greece together
only once, in May 1981, when my husband and I spent a month with them
travelling through the country. It was a
very special time for us all.
During the ten
years while Xanthoula was away (1951-1961), the situation for the family in
Greece had improved quite a lot, especially after I left in 1955. Mother and grandfather stayed with Eleni in
Katerini until 1956, while Stefanos stayed with relatives to finish his studies
in Thessaloniki. During that time, he
worked hard at various jobs, teaching at coaching colleges and night schools while
he completed his doctorate. In 1956, he took
mother and grandfather to live with him in Thessaloniki Thessaloniki Melbourne
We all
eventually made it back to Melbourne in 1962, including myself from Paris at
the end of that year. I was offered an
instructorship in the same French department in which I had been an
undergraduate at the University
of Melbourne Vermont Vermont
This was the
home in which I left Bert and Xanthoula when I married in 1964 and moved to
Brisbane with my husband. It was in that
same year that they bought their first car and invited our mother to come to Australia Melbourne and a couple of months with
me in Brisbane
Two years later,
in 1966, Xanthoula, who had chosen to stay home to take care of the two old men
and then to see her children grow up, was now able to do something outside the
house. Their sons John and Michael had
grown up enough and were busy with school. Uncle George was soon to come down
and live with them because he was beginning not to able to take care of himself
properly, but Xanthoula felt that she could go out to work and still manage the
house. Especially since Bert was always
ready to give a hand around the house. She could have taken up her career as a
teacher of the Greek language but it would have meant commuting into the
city. She preferred to find something in
the area where they lived so as not to waste time and be able to get back early. A new chocolate factory had just opened up not
too far from the house and she presented herself there for a job, any job. Starting as an ordinary worker on the
production floor, she was soon selected to be in charge of a section. After a while, she was again chosen by her
supervisors and placed in charge of the factory’s packaging department where eight
people designed the presentation and the packaging of the various products.
She ended up
working there for fourteen years and when she decided to retire at the end of
1979, after Bert had retired himself, her colleagues gave her a party. She was presented with a card which she has
kept all these years. It was signed by 73
people. Many of them wrote funny
farewell lines to her, such as ‘We’ll
miss your finesse. The department will be one hell of a mess!’ or ‘I have been a Xan fan ever since the job
began’. ‘Going to miss your laugh and
cheek, but good luck to you – you lovely Greek!’ A young man in a wheelchair, Tony, who
worked beside her at the beginning, used to call her affectionately ‘Mrs.
Wriggles’. ‘A better ‘Wriggles’ I’ve
never seen. Xanthoula, you’ve really been a Queen. In moments of loss I would twist and shout. But
you would always be there to help me out.’
She was liked by
everyone for her good nature and respected for her good work. She was loyal to the friends she made there
and still meets regularly, once a month, with a small group of women who call
themselves ‘The Cadbury Girls’.
Bert and
Xanthoula lived in Vermont for twenty years until Christmas 1979. Their children, John and Michael, grew up
there and it was also the house into which they moved Uncle George after he
became too old to take care of himself.
He came down from Upwey to live with them again for another ten years. Xanthoula was reflecting only recently how
there was someone living with them most of their married life.
Bert had made a
good career and a good name in the Commonwealth Police Force. He had originally joined the Victoria Police
after he married Xanthoula but he soon changed Forces to serve in the
Commonwealth Police – something equivalent to the American FBI. His previous experience and his knowledge of
Greek may have been the main factors for this move. He was highly regarded and
given important assignments throughout his career. On December 17th 1967, when the
Prime Minister of Australia Harold Holt was reported missing, Sergeant Wrigley
was one of the first officers to be called to the scene. Photos in ‘The Sun’ the next day show him walking right behind Mrs. Holt and
her two sons. A few days later, when President Lyndon Johnson came to Australia for Mr. Holt’s funeral, Sergeant
Wrigley was called to be on the US
He was also called
for other special situations, such as student demonstrations. Pulling away and sometimes arresting young
people gathered outside the National Service Registration Office wasn’t one of
Sergeant Wrigley’s favorite jobs. No
doubt he felt divided on that issue because he believed in freedom of speech
and the right to protest. So he
intervened as ‘gently’ as possible. On
July 2nd 1969, a small number of University students staged an anti-conscription
sit-in in Melbourne
“Most of the demonstrators police evicted from the
Commonwealth Centre in Melbourne yesterday were dragged out feet first, but the
girl above got more gentle treatment from the Commonwealth police
sergeant. One of the sergeant’s
colleagues is using a less considerate method in the picture below”.
These were just
a few emergency situations. There were
other more secret missions and the press didn’t know about them. At least they admit not knowing much about them. A reporter by the name of John Sorell, in a
column called “On the Spot”, published
in “The Herald” on October 1st
1971 an article with the title “The
‘quiet men’ hit the headlines: Enter the Feds”. Most of the article is devoted to Bert.
“I know a Commonwealth policeman. He is a big, red-faced, chunky fellow who
often disappears mysteriously into the night.
“Special assignment for Bert,” says his wife with more
than a touch of pride. “Don’t know
anything more about it.”
A couple of days later Bert will re-appear. He never volunteers and I never ask what’s
been going on.
Once he came back with sticking plaster on his chin,
and on a second occasion had a bandaged arm.
But Bert, who fought the Germans through Greece
I was ignorant of Bert’s special duties until one day
I picked up the morning paper. There on
page one was middle-aged Bert, brilliantly captured on film, flying through the
air in a superbly executed rugby tackle.
The tackle was a midnight arrest of a student who had
been holing out on Commonwealth property.
So now I knew.
And I suppose Bert was involved the other morning at the Melbourne University
I dare not ask.
Commonwealth or Federal police are more inclined to secrecy than our
State lawmen. They are generally a
non-committal bunch, who rarely gossip even to journalists. They have an ability to blend and pass
unnoticed through crowds. (...)
Nowadays, Commonwealth police make lots of news. Their activities are expanding, so are their
powers, so is their strength.
They are more or less an embryo FBI operating as the
central law enforcement agency for the Federal Government. Among other things, they police the controversial
Crimes Act and guard VIPs and rocket ranges.
(...) There are about 900 in the force, including 300
in Victoria
Commonwealth policemen have had some bitter and bloody
clashes with students in recent memory, as they battle the widespread
resentment against the National Service Act.
They would much prefer to just guard rocket ranges. I do know that from Bert.
What we know for
sure is that, for the most part, Bert’s official assignment was the Greek
immigrants, whether legal or illegal. He
was probably one of the few if not the only Australian officer who could speak
Greek. The Greek community loved him as
he always tried to help within the law even those who ‘jumped ship’. Those days, it was the most common way of
getting into the country illegally but quickly.
Periodically and at specified times the government would grant amnesty
to illegal immigrants. Sergeant Wrigley
would drop in to cafes, restaurants, fish and chip shops, green-grocer shops
run by Greeks, and let them know that if he found anyone who was illegally in
the country he would have to arrest them and deport them. As a ‘by the way’ he would at the same time let
it be known that there was an amnesty coming up at a particular date, and for
those who wanted to stay in Australia to ‘lie low’ until that time so that he
couldn’t find them. Then they could go
to a particular office in the Immigration department, present themselves and
apply to become legal immigrants. I am
guessing now, but I don’t think I am wrong, that he found a way to repay the
Greek people for their help and protection they gave him, risking their lives,
when he was in Greece.
Perhaps partly
because of his natural modesty and partly because of his share of ‘secret’
service to his country and the community, Bert was a private and low-key
individual. He didn’t talk about his
adventurous past or his assignments. But
one always felt in his presence that there was more to him than what you saw. At
the same time, he had a great sense of humor, enjoyed friends, even if they
just ‘dropped in’ unannounced, a good Greek custom which he encouraged. He
enjoyed a good meal -- although he was easy to please and liked to cook himself
when he was home -- and a nice bottle of wine. He was very much liked by his colleagues and
appreciated for his kindness and concern, but also for his dedication and, when
needed, his toughness on the job. In the
Force, he was known for his team spirit and camaraderie. When the time came to retire from the
Commonwealth Police, 25 years after he had joined, he was given a warm farewell
party and presented with a gigantic card signed by seventy-one people – a respectable
number, although Xanthoula beat him by two more signatures! It reads:
“We all worked so well together just like one big
machine... But now you’re leaving... and we’ll have to get another nut!”
In all the years
I lived with my sister Xanthoula and Bert, and in all the later years we spent
time together either in Greece or when I was visiting them in Australia, I saw
a couple who loved and respected each other deeply. My sister was never ‘Xanthoula’, it was
always ‘love’ -- or another loving but funny way he had of addressing her, which
stays in the family and which Xanthoula probably doesn’t want me to mention
here! ‘Bert’ was also rare on
Xanthoula’s lips, unless she was referring to him. I was never witness to any friction between
them, and when I asked Xanthoula if she was ever angry with him, she could only
remember the occasion when he went ahead and sold a caravan they had without
discussing it with her. To his defense,
she says that he did it on the spot where the caravan was located, one day when
he went there to cut the grass around it and he was made an offer there and
then. Cell phones didn’t exist at that
time, and he had grown a little weary of taking care of the land around
it. His feet and leg injuries were
causing him more pain with age, and for some years even before he retired he
had to wear specially made boots with supports.
It was becoming increasingly difficult for him to walk normally.
Bert died in
1995, seven years later than his friend Bruce, at the age of 75. It wasn’t a bad age to reach for someone who
went through the hardships of war, fighting the Germans in a foreign land, and
then the Japanese in another foreign land.
He thought
deeply into the meaning of life and death and was the most comforting person for
me when our brother Stefanos died in 1992.
That is when I took time off from teaching in America and came to Melbourne
to visit the family for three months. It
was the time I did the taped interview with him. He maintained a high sense of moral integrity,
of right and wrong. He was also generous,
kind-hearted and compassionate. He read
a lot and possessed, in my mind, a kind of other-worldly wisdom. That is how I
will always remember Bert.
I am indeed very
fortunate to still have my sister Xanthoula alive and well, this Christmas of
December 2009. She is 83 years old, the
mother of two good sons and the grandmother of four good-looking
grandsons. She is the same beautiful,
thoughtful, generous, forgiving, and brave person she was in her youth. She is still active and very creative around
the house and beyond. Her present home,
my apartment in America, my seaside place in Greece, and many homes of
relatives and friends both in Australia and in Greece are decorated with her
art works. As her greatest fan, I have
the greatest number of all: oil paintings, painted tiles, china plates with the
finest flowers I have ever seen, crochet pieces. She has hand-knitted countless pullovers and
countless fancy scarves and has given them all as gifts. I especially have been favored throughout my
life. She used to make my clothes
through all stages of my youth, and I remember in my student days that she
would buy a piece of fabric one day, and in less than forty-eight hours the
dress would be ready for me to wear! Now
she buys clothes for me. Every time I
come to visit her I find some new clothes waiting for me in her closet and in
the drawers assigned to me. I have
received much thought and care from her throughout my life – from the time she
was dressing me up and taking me out for a stroll as a baby, showing me off to
her friends, through to today. I am 73
years old, but she still ‘dresses me up’ and is still ‘showing me off’ to her
friends! Her home is like a haven for me
and I like to come and stay here as long as I can. But we also travel together. Over the last fifteen years, since Bert died,
she has regularly joined me in Greece
This story was written by Valentini
Papadopoulou, sister of Xanthoula Wrigley, Christmas 2009 when she visited Xanthoula in Melbourne , Australia.
It is disappointing that Valentini never saw the end result of her efforts, but I am sure Xanthoula will be pleased to see this Blog completed and available for all who wish to read it.
If you have any comments or questions, please contact the author, Joy Olney via email - joyolney@gmail.com
