Insight pays tribute to the thousands of women who migrated to Australia in the 50s, 60s and 70s to build lives with men they’d never met. Promised Brides, Tuesday May 14 at 8:30pm on SBS and SBS On Demand.
Stamatina Frossynos, Tina to her family and friends, is now 88 and living in Melbourne surrounded by her large family who she’s intensely proud of. Life has turned out well for Tina who at 25-years-old made the life-changing decision to cross the world to marry a man who she’d only seen a photo of.
Tina grew up in the Greek coastal village of Porto Heli in a family of eight children. Her education finished after primary school as she was the oldest daughter and required to help her mother raise the other children. Her father died from pneumonia when she was 17 and Tina took it upon herself to take her older brothers to Athens so they could complete high school. She worked hard as a machinist making clothes and then opened a small shop.
At the age of 25 she attended a party and joked, “Hey, everybody [is] together, married, boyfriend, what about me? Nobody for me!” A woman at the party said “Would you go to Australia? I have a nephew there. Bring me a photo and I will send it to him.”
Tina sent a photo to her future husband's mother who said, “I like that girl.” The mother then sent the photo to her son Con who’d migrated to Australia a few years earlier in 1955 for work opportunities. Times were tough back home in Greece after the wars so he had decided to try his luck down under.
The first photo Con and Tina sent each other. Source: Supplied
Con sent a photo of himself back to Tina.
"Mmmm, he’s very nice, handsome. I [have] never seen anyone that nice, my dream. In his nice bow tie, he could sell ice-cream,” Tina recalls she said at the time.
A year later in 1957 Tina boarded the Castel Felice boat with 1000 other young women who were promised brides, leaving their family and homeland to marry men they’d usually only seen a photo of.
Con and Tina met for the first time at Port Melbourne once the boat docked. Con was waiting with an enormous bunch of flowers to welcome his bride-to be.
Tina and Con were married on the 20th of February 1958, three weeks after Tina arrived in Melbourne.
“We couldn’t get married any earlier as there were too many girls arriving. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, weddings every day. Too many Greek boys and girls here so they marry every single day,” Tina recalls.
Con passed away 20 years ago but Tina keeps busy with her large family and has no regrets about her decision to marry someone on the other side of the world.
“I [do] not believe why I said yes because I never hear of Australia but I am very happy, believe me, from the first day I arrived I was very happy.”
