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Keywords: Gillian Bouras

  • AUSTRALIA

    Child migrant trauma

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 10 August 2011
    3 Comments

    At least adults have a little hope of understanding the pain, and coping with it. Even the most equable of children must find the experience bewildering at best, and agonising at worst. My eldest son had a period of not eating. His migration as a child remains the defining fact of his life.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Greek crisis viewed from the corner store

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 15 June 2011
    4 Comments

    Panayiotis runs the mini-market he inherited from his father. I have known father and son for 30 years. 'How do you see things at this stage of the krisi?' I ask him, for I'm always asking people what they think of Greece's financial crisis. 'What crisis?' he grins. 'Greece has got a crisis; Greeks haven't.'

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Teaching boys to love and hate books

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 18 May 2011
    7 Comments

    My sons had their bedtime stories for years, but had to become used to my saying 'Just a minute' while I raced to the end of a page or chapter. Now grown, my technophile youngest had a most surprisng reaction to the marvellous present sent to me recently.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Anzac revelations

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 20 April 2011
    9 Comments

    My father was just 23 when he saw action. He is now nearly 90, and his recent description of the Borneo beach landing, which he had never mentioned to his offspring before, made my brother's blood run cold.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Bilingual parenting

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 16 February 2011
    4 Comments

    When I first moved to Greece, my language skills were reduced to those of a three-year-old. The pain of this was exacerbated when six months after our arrival, my six and eight-year-old sons started speaking to each other in Greek.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Greece's wheel of financial hardship

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 03 November 2010
    3 Comments

    The Greek population is trying to cope with the consequences of three decades of greed and irresponsibility. My middle son is in the Army; my youngest son is a fire fighter. Both have had their salaries cut by a total of 3000 euros for the year, and more cuts may follow.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Lessons from a loveless marriage

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 22 September 2010
    7 Comments

    Once upon a time a man told me that he had gone ahead and married his wife, even though he knew he didn't love her. 'But why?' I asked, mystified, for surely living with someone you are not in love with is the hardest thing in the world. 'Because it wasn't important,' he replied.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The life and death of Barry and Aristomenis

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 07 July 2010
    10 Comments

    When you love, you must be prepared to die another death before you die your own. Five minutes before 19-year-old Aristomenis died, he called in at his mother's place of work to tell her he thought the exam had gone well.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Close encounters with Greek unrest

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 10 May 2010
    5 Comments

    Greek leaders condemned the outbreak of violence that has seen innocent people die on the streets of Athens. However many people fear that worse is to come. Most people are angry, particularly the young. Greece has never treated its youth well.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Death and rebirth of a migrant

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 14 April 2010
    4 Comments

    When such melancholy descends the only thing to do is walk. I fetched up near a chapel on a hill, for the village is ringed by chapels, six of them, in a kind of protective belt. Outside I found a gum tree and a Judas tree standing side by side: my life, or my two lives in a neat symbol.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Losing and finding Dad

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 10 February 2010
    11 Comments

    Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. My family seemed happy enough, but when my mother died my father rejected his children. As I contemplated a reunion I wondered if he would recognise me. It had been seven years and he had recently been diagnosed with dementia.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Lessons in Greek prejudice

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 25 November 2009
    4 Comments

    My generation of Australians grew up with bigotry: the cordial loathing between Catholics and Protestants has faded only recently. But only when I married into a Greek family did I learn of the bitter and complicated antipathy of the Greeks for Albanians.

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