Unfortunately I couldn’t get a photo of Mr Nikos Mitsou. He was whisked away in his wheelchair for his connecting flight to Melbourne too rapidly. Nikos sat next to us on the plane from Athens to Abu Dhabi and told us much of his long life story.
Born in 1910 in a village which from 1930 until today has been named ‘Ktistades’ after the occupation of most of the occupants (Ktistes – builders, or more precisely, stone masons). Nikos’ father was also a builder and owned two strong mules which transported stone and mortar to construction sites. In 1943, the Germans requested he load his mules with arms and munitions to resupply the military positions of the occupying forces. He refused and was knocked in the head. A strong man with a height of nearly two meters, he got back up immediately and retaliated, knocking two soldiers down to the ground. He was then escorted to a superior, who had him severely bashed and thrown in a shallow spring to drown. He wasn’t discovered until four days later by his family.
Between 1955 and 1959 Nikos worked building stone houses in Laconia and Messinia, in the southern Pelopponese. After this he gained employment with a large construction company based in Lamia. A few years later he was accused by the ruling military junta of being a communist and faced exile. Instead, he managed to get on a ship bound for Australia.
Nikos now lives in Noble Park near his children. This was his last trip back to Greece, he says – aside from his age, he found the place disgusting, full of garbage and cigarettes and smoke. His trade as a stone mason has been abandoned by the Greeks and is now belongs to the Albanians.
Perhaps we’ll bump into him in Melbourne…
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