Footscray’s Kleoniki Matziaris-Garay was unsurprisingly thrilled to become a Member of the Order of Australia (OAM) in the 2025 Australia Day honours.
“I’m a migrant from Greece. I came when I was 18 years old so it’s a big thing for me,” said 74 year old Ms Matziaris-Garay who was honoured for her services to Victoria’s large Greek community, many of whom arrived as young migrants like she did in 1968.
“The first two years I lived in Port Melbourne and then Elwood for a year and then we made the big move the western suburbs because my parents joined us and they wanted to be somewhere with Greeks,” said Ms Matziaris-Garay of her early years in Melbourne and how she ended up to the city’s west, .
Ms Matziaris-Garay has remained in the western suburbs ever since, with most of that time spent in service of other migrants from her homeland through the Australian Greek welfare society PRONIA.
“Because I was in different positions there, PRONIA and the Greek community was like my extended family,” she said, adding that her desire to help the Greek migrant community came from her own struggles upon arrival.
“I felt I’d lost my identity,” said Ms Matziaris-Garay of her difficulties fitting in to her new country, something that was exacerbated by the attitudes of the time.
“The focus was to go to work,” she said of the prevailing view in the Greek migrant community.
“The focus wasn’t on establishing themselves here, learning the language and improving their lives here.”
As result, Ms Matziaris-Garay made helping Greek migrants overcome the language barrier as well as other practicalities such as how to access government services and support, the focus of her time at PRONIA.
As she explained, it’s a mission which runs in the family.
“My husband is Chilean. He’s a migrant too and he was president for 10 years of the South American and Spanish migrant welfare organsation.”
Both Ms Matziaris-Garay and her husband are now happily retired and recently moved to an apartment in Footscray after 30 years living in Williamstown.
Given her decades of work in the area, both feel like home.
“For me, the west, I feel like I belong here. It’s like my own village.”
