The ocean liner Patris departs for Australia

On Monday, December 14, 1959, the ocean liner Patris, owned by the Chandris brothers and captained by Zannis Xenios, departed from the port of Piraeus carrying more than 1,000 passengers to Australia. It travelled 9,500 miles and reached the port of Fremantle 23 days later, on January 2, 1960, and the port of Melbourne four days later. The Greek-owned ocean liner linked Greece and Australia, transporting people and goods at a time when Greek migration to Australia was reaching its peak.

The mass postwar migration from Greece started in 1952, with the signing of the bilateral agreement between Australia and Greece. The Provisional Intergovernmental Committee for the Movement of Migrants from Europe (PICMME), founded in Brussels in 1951, played a major role in signing the agreement, negotiating the terms and establishing the initial settlement and employment conditions for the newly-arrived migrants. Within twenty years, more than 250,000 Greeks had settled in Australia and 3,000 in New Zealand. These migrants were mostly farmers and unskilled workers looking for work and better life conditions than the ones offered by post-civil war Greece.

The establishment of a direct link between Greece and Australia, which also stopped at the ports of Egypt, giving many Egyptians the opportunity to migrate to Australia, highlights the development potential of the Greek shipping capital and, at the same time, reflects the promise of constant movement of people and goods between the two countries. In the article of the magazine Naftika Chronika [Nautical Chronicles], migration to Australia is naturally presented as a major life choice, but one that doesn’t have to sever the relationship the migrants have with their homeland, since with this new ‘national ship line’ Greece will be closer than ever. Both the writer’s and the shipowners’ words, as they are presented in the text, emphasise the possibility of visiting the homeland often using this new ship line in an attempt to change the dominant ideas surrounding overseas migration during the first half of the 20^th century. The journey to and from Greece would now be more affordable and pleasant for passengers, since the accommodation and food provided were more than adequate across all classes, in contrast with the equivalent services provided by other lines.

Once again, the port of Piraeus became a migration hub for people looking for work and hoping for a better life. Half a century later, it was again a boat called Patris which was now carrying new Greek migrants to the other side of the world. Most were migrating to Australia for life, choosing it as their new homeland. Today, despite all the advances in transportation, Greek-Australians still find travelling back to Greece, even just on vacation, neither simple nor cheap.