It is 45 years since the father of my children, seeking a way in which to provide his youngest sister with a dowry, disembarked from the good ship Patris and stood, shivering and bewildered, on rainy Station Pier.
He was not alone, for the ship's cargo, people and mail, had come from Piraeus: those were the days when the Chandris Line had a whole fleet moving constantly between Europe and Australia.
Greek immigration was a highly organised process in the booming mid-60s. Factory agents boarded the Patris at Fremantle, and by the time Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney were reached, most hopeful arrivals had been set up in jobs and boarding-houses.
Factories had experienced Greek workers already in situ, and the new chums always found themselves living in the familiar comfort of Greek families who saw a good way to add to their income, for that was what immigration was all about then, in that period between the displaced post-war refugees and the 'boat people' of the 1980s.
My very old Dad is fond of saying that 'the wheel has come full circle.' And that is what most people, I think, hope for: replication in the form of descendants. But there are other wheels, and one has already turned for me, for my eldest son left Greece for Melbourne in 2002, and has never returned. Now my second son is thinking of doing the same thing.
There are many countries whose main export has traditionally been people: Ireland and Greece, suffering dire financial difficulties together at present, are two of these. For an extended period, however, the populations of both countries enjoyed the prosperity that they had long yearned for.
Such prosperity did not last, for both simple and complex reasons that are still being investigated and analysed, and it now seems that many young Greeks, at least, may revert to traditional patterns as part of the human search for hope and for work.
Greece's story is an old one borne out by new statistics: just on 33 per cent of people aged between 15 and 24 are currently out of work, and 16 per cent of those in the 25-34 group are also unemployed, at least in the short term: Greece is an agricultural