Reprinted
from Hellenic Herald
The Karitsa Community of South Australia marked its 40th anniversary on Saturday, 26 September 2026, with a sold-out dinner and the launch of a book honouring the people who carried the life of a small Laconian village to Adelaide.
At the centre of the night was The Journey and Legacy of Early Karitsiotes in Australia: From Karitsa to Goodwood, a record of the people who left Karitsa, the lives they built in South Australia and the ties they kept with the village and with one another.
Karitsa lies on the slopes of Mount Parnon in Laconia, about 50 kilometres south-east of Sparta. For the Karitsiotes who made Adelaide their home, the village remained more than a point of origin. Many returned to it, particularly during the Greek summer, while bringing its language, customs and celebrations into community life in South Australia.
Goodwood, where many Karitsiotes settled and became active in local life, grew into an important meeting place for the families and their descendants.
The book’s forewords place that history within the wider story of Greek migration to South Australia. Consul-General of Greece in Adelaide Dr Alexandra Theodoropoulou writes of early homes opening their doors to new arrivals, while workplaces, small businesses, kafeneia, churches, schools and family gatherings helped build a community around them.
City of Unley Mayor Michael Hewitson AM recalls hearing accounts of people going into regional areas for work before making the Goodwood area, along the tramline, their home. In his foreword, he writes: “Unley would not be Unley without its deep connection to the Greek heritage.”
Their community became formally organised in 1986, when 34 founding members established the Brotherhood of Karitsa at its inaugural meeting. Later known as the Karitsa Community of South Australia, it retained its founding purpose: to support Karitsiotes in need and assist the village of Karitsa when required. Its activities in Adelaide continued to echo the traditions and celebrations of the village.
Four decades on, tickets to the anniversary dinner sold out within weeks, reflecting the importance members continue to place on belonging, connection and their shared roots.
Introducing the book, Community President Michael Malavazos described the launch as a chance to bring the village and its Australian story into view for different generations.
The book examines the years in which migration reshaped Karitsa. As Malavazos explained, “Between 1953 and 1973, 154 people left Karitsa. Mostly young men and women with a suitcase, a name, and a stubborn bit of hope.”
Some travelled through the Bonegilla Migrant Centre and worked in other parts of Australia before families and friends found their way to Adelaide. Their journeys are told alongside the history of the hardship and upheaval that preceded their departure.
One of the book’s first family profiles follows the early arrival of Giannis Katsambis, who arrived in Adelaide in March 1954. His Wright Street kafeneio became a place where new arrivals could find familiar faces and practical support.
The wider pattern of settlement, Malavazos said, grew through such personal connections: “That is how it began. One family finding the next family. One address becoming a lifeline for the next arrival. And slowly, quietly, a piece of Karitsa took root in Goodwood — its language surviving long enough to be taught in the local school, its values of family and kinship holding a community together on the other side of the world.”
For Malavazos, the history is inseparable from his own family. He recalled travelling to Karitsa in 1972, aged ten, with his parents and sister, seeing the lights of the village at dusk and watching his father reunite with relatives and friends after nearly two decades apart.
In his written introduction to the book, Malavazos describes meeting his grandfather and receiving a grandmother’s embrace for the first time during that visit. “That single homecoming taught me something it took me years to fully understand: why leaving Karitsa had left an unhealing wound in my father’s soul.” As such, the book is a representation by its authors to preserve both the pain of departure and the courage of those who left for the generations that followed.
The book moves from a historical account, A Village Transplanted, into more than 60 family profiles, before turning to the development of the association itself. Other sections address the Karitsiotes’ sea voyages, honour the first arrivals and bring together moments connecting the two homelands.
The family profiles were assembled through interviews by community members, drawing on conversations in which descendants and relatives shared memories that might otherwise have remained within individual households.
Malavazos called the result “a family album for every Karitsioti descendant in this room.”
Turning to the first generation, Rozaklis made clear whom the evening was intended to honour: “Above all, tonight we honour you. The migrants. The heroes of our story. Those who crossed the seas with a suitcase full of dreams.”
Rozaklis spoke directly to those whose work enabled later generations to build their lives in Australia. “You cultivated the land. You built roads. You worked in factories. And all that hard work was not for yourselves. It was for your children. For your grandchildren. For the generations that would follow, who would grow up enjoying the fruits of your hard work.”
Rozaklis closed with the image of an olive tree connecting the two places: “With deep roots in the place that gave us life, and branches that have stretched all the way to Australia.”
For a community whose anniversary was celebrated in Goodwood while its thoughts turned to Karitsa, the image captured the purpose of the book: to keep the stories of those first journeys alive and give the generations that followed a way to carry them forward.
The celebration took place at Goodwood Community Hall. City of Unley Mayor Hewitson and the Consul General of Greece in Adelaide, Dr Theodoropoulou, delivered speeches. The Greek Orthodox Community of South Australia Dance Group also performed.
*All photos: AJ Photography
