Biloela

This is the story of young immigrants from the small towns of southern Rhodes (Rhodes Island, Greece) who came to work in the sugar cane and cotton fields of Biloela, Queensland, Australia. These early immigrants were overwhelmed with nostalgia for their native towns, the families they left behind, and their church. However, they took the opportunity to improve their lives by working in the harsh rural environment of the Biloela cotton and sugar cane fields in Queensland.

By 1934, Callide Valley had 40,000 acres of cotton planted, and a butter factory opened in 1936.

In March 1934, The Courier-Mail reported: “Among the cotton growers of the Biloela district are a former general of the Ural Cossacks who fought in the Great War (World War I) and a Russian Orthodox priest.”

A Greek Orthodox Archbishop, Timotheos Evangelinidis (1880 – 1949), the metropolis of Australia and New Zealand from 1931 to 1947, visited Biloela from time to time to baptize children, give communion to the Orthodox faithful and preach the Divine Liturgy.

In the first few years after World War II, Biloela’s population was about 1,000 people, making it the largest town in Banana Shire.

After having acquired considerable savings, many of these early immigrants started businesses in the city, such as coffee shops and restaurants.

Philip Diakou

Phillip Hagi-Diakou was born in the coastal town of Gennadi, Rhodes Island, Greece. In 1936, at the age of fourteen, he said goodbye to his mother, his sister and his town and traveled with his father on the Italian ship Romolo bound for Queensland, Australia to seek their fortune.

Phillip worked alongside his father in the cotton and sugar cane fields of Biloela, coping with hot and humid conditions, as well as dingoes and snakes.

However, he was determined to succeed through hard work and dedicated himself to learning the English language by studying a Greek-English dictionary.

He was nineteen when World War II began, so he enlisted in the Australian Army and was posted to Darwin, where he served as a cook. It was to be the beginning of a lifelong career in the kitchen.

When the war ended, he moved to Adelaide in South Australia and bought Gouger Cafe, the cafe that changed his life.

Gouger Cafe-Adelaide

The close-knit, hard-working and dedicated Diakou family made their Gouger Cafe an icon of Adelaide seafood restaurants, headed up by Phillip and his wife Anastasia in the kitchen and their three children, Maria, Steve and Bill. The Gouger Cafe pioneered seafood dining in Adelaide and Gouger Street would become the hub for the cream of South Australian seafood restaurants.

the stiliano family

Stylianos (Steve) Stiliano (nickname Matsi) said goodbye to his mother and their small hilltop village of Mesanagros, Rhodes Island, Greece in the mid-1930s and traveled with Yianni and Marko from his father and his brother to work in the cotton and sugar cane fields. of Rockhampton and Monto in Queensland, Australia.

In 1944, Steve met and married his wife Erini in Biloela, who had also immigrated with her family from Lahania, Rhodes Island, Greece.

They had five children: twins George and Anna, Philip and Gary, who were born in Biloela, and Stella, who was born in Adelaide in 1957.

Mixed Agriculture – Cotton and Livestock

The Stiliano family had a mixed agricultural enterprise on the outskirts of Biloela that integrated the cultivation of crops (cotton was the main cash crop) as well as the raising of cattle (mainly dairy) for meat and milk.

The cotton seeds were planted in spring and the crop had to be harvested before the weather could completely damage or ruin their quality and reduce yield.

His cows had to give birth to a calf before they could produce milk.

Some of his calves were bred for veal and about three-quarters of the heifers became replacements for his adult milk-producing cows.

Long working hours cause tiredness and fatigue. And the family was exposed to numerous life-threatening environmental and safety hazards, including snakes, heat exposure, falls, injuries and pesticides.

coffee in amount

The Stiliano family tilled, toiled, and persevered in the cotton fields to earn enough money to set up a cafeteria in Monto, about 60 miles from Biloela, offering fast service, long hours, and delicious food seven days a week. week.

Its cafeteria offered traditional English-style steak and eggs, a mixed grill, chops and sausages, fish and chips, as well as hamburgers, ice cream, sundaes, milkshakes, and soft drinks that could be purchased to sit down or take away. .

Every Tuesday would become a popular social pastime at his cafe with farmers from the surrounding areas taking time off from their daily chores on their farms to enjoy a delicious cafe-style meal with family or friends.

nick frosinakis

Nick Frossinakis, along with his father Manoli and his brothers Philip and Tom, from the small town of Lahania, Rhodes Island, Greece, in the south of Rhodes, left the uncertainty and economic instability of post-war Greece in 1949 with the hope of achieving a more stable life in Australia.

They migrated to Biloela where they worked and endured in the cotton fields to earn enough money to buy their own small farm.

Nick’s sister, Eleni (Helen), stayed in Lahania, Rhodes Island for about three years, then traveled to Australia with another immigrant woman from Lahania to join her family in Australia.

Horse-drawn plows were used for cultivating land on farms in those days to prepare for sowing seeds or planting to loosen or turn the soil.

They lived in houses made of sheet iron on hard earth floors and suffocated the long hot tropical summers.

Their houses had no electricity, so kerosene lamps with a wick to light were used to ignite.

Keeping clean and using the bathroom was not as easy in those early days as it is today.

The bathroom and toilet were in stark contrast to the suites we are familiar with today.

Whether it was freezing cold or sweltering hot, many immigrants had to make do with a portable metal tub to bathe in, and wherever they could find privacy in the open air was their bathroom.

And, linen canvas water bags were a necessity in those days because the availability of clean, fresh drinking water in remote rural locations was essential for survival. All of the farmers had to rely on plenty of sun, warm conditions, and 4 to 5 months of frost-free temperatures to produce the fluffy white cotton.

Milky cows

The family subsequently acquired some 120 dairy cows which they milked every morning and then sent to the factory to produce dairy products such as drinking milk, cream, butter, yoghurt and cheese for human consumption.

Christos and Zaharoula Arnas

Christos Arnas was from the village of Katavia and Zaharoula Diakomihalis was from the village of Lahania, Rhodes Island.

In the late 1930s, they both decided to leave their island home for a more peaceful life in Australia, taking with them the virtues of rural life, old-fashioned farms and towns.

Christos immigrated to Biloela, Queensland, Australia in 1936.

Zaharoula was brought to Australia by her father, Phillip Diakomihalis, in 1937.

They met and married in Biloela in 1937 and together they bought a farm in rural Callide on the outskirts of Biloela where they grew cotton and raised cattle.

Their children Irene was born in 1938, Phillip was born in 1943 and Mary in 1944.

Every morning, before going to school, Irene, the eldest daughter, would feed 32 calves and then, after school, she would feed the pigs.

When the Arnas family went to do their shopping in the town of Biloela, they would travel 19th century style, on horseback and in a buggy (an old-fashioned throwback to a simpler, more leisurely time).

Mixed Agriculture – Cotton and Livestock

The mixed agricultural enterprise of the Arnas family integrated the cultivation of crops (cotton was the main cash crop) as well as the raising of cattle.

It reconnected them with the traditional, self-sufficient rural lifestyle they were used to in their homeland of southern Rhodes.

His farm produced milk, meat, cotton, cereals, vegetables and fruits.

They worked in the hot sun and in the rain to watch over their crops and livestock seven days a week, in silence and without complaint.

In the cotton fields, the family sang and endured pulling the fluffy white lint out of the boll while trying not to cut their hands on the sharp ends and having to bend down to pick the cotton because the average cotton plant is less than four feet tall. height. .

The cows required grass, hay and grain to feed on and adequate grass to graze, while the newborn calves required nursing every three to four hours or an average of 7 to 10 times per day and consumed 1 to 2 pints of milk during each breastfeeding.

His pastured pigs presented other challenges because poor nutrition will retard a pig’s growth and affect meat quality and pig welfare.

The Arnas family fed their pigs a varied diet such as corn, barley, soybean meal, bread, vegetables, fruit, and pork pellets to stay healthy.

Banana peels are also a good feed for pigs due to their high energy content.

Each pig needed to eat an average of 6 to 8 pounds of feed per day and they were free to roam the Arnas farm, in the sun and fresh air.

one room school

Callide Primary School was a one-room school built on stilts with a single teacher who taught the basics of academics to various grades of primary (elementary age) boys and girls from the surrounding rural areas of Bilolela.

Nick and his brother’s Tom and Philip were the first Greek immigrants to attend Callide Elementary School. Nick would put his brother Tom on the crossbar of his bike to ride the 2 miles on a gravel road to school every day. Irene Diakos also used to cycle to school.

Anna and George Stiliano were farm children looking for the first time at a classroom with rows of desks and a large teacher’s desk at the front.

That trek from home to this strange new world was very different from their old family farm, pastures, and fields.