A Visit with the Australian Alfieris Clan

Sunday, July 2, 2017

We flew United directly from San Francisco to Sydney. It was a long flight over--14 hours to be exact. We were lucky enough to be able to fly business thanks to Gavin’s frequent flyer status and ability to upgrade tickets, so we slept well in the lie-flat chairs. We arrived in Sydney at 7:00 am. We had the forethought to book a hotel room for the night prior so we'd have a place to freshen up in the morning. We took a taxi to our hotel, the Sheraton on the Park, right across from Hyde Park. We checked in, left our bags in our room and headed to the lounge for a light breakfast. The view was awesome from the 21st floor, as we looked across the park at the imposing St. Mary's Cathedral with the harbor in the distance. The skies were clear blue and sunny and my boys enjoyed looking at a couple of naval ships and a helicopter carrier that were docked. After breakfast we went back to our room for a mini power nap and a shower, and got ready for our family BBQ at my cousin’s house.

Thanks to my Aunt Vikki, my mom's sister, who is the resident genealogy expert in our family, we have connected and formed relationships with some somewhat distant cousins, whose bloodline originated on the island of Kythera in Greece. If I understand it correctly, my great-grandfather had two brothers whose sons emigrated to Sydney in the 1940s after the war, which was quite common for many Kytherians to go to Australia. These two men, first cousins, Jimmy and George Alfieris, were my grandmother Angie’s first cousins. 

Me with my grandmother's first cousins,
Jimmy (left) and George (right)

I remember meeting them and their families on a trip to Greece with my grandparents in 1987 when I was just a teenager. It’s pretty cool that 30 years later, we are still in contact (thank you, Facebook!) So George’s son, Emmanuel, came to the states this past December with his wife Louise, son George, and daughter Victoria. We had the pleasure of hosting them for a dinner at our house right after Christmas, and they also met many of the other Californian Alfieris descendants. When they learned we were coming to Sydney, they insisted on having us over to meet our Aussie Alfieris cousins.

We took an Uber out to Campsie, which is a Sydney suburb where Emmanuel and his family live, and attended a casual, intimate gathering of, oh, just 30 to 40 or so family members and other friends. Emmanuel and his wife Louise had prepared a veritable feast for lunch, including barbequed steak, lamb, chicken and sausages, salads, veggies, olives, cheese, bread, and of course fruit and sweets. It was so fun getting to meet everyone and putting together faces with the names on the family tree, which I had been diligently studying so I could keep all of the cousins straight. These cousins included Nick (George’s son, Emmanuel’s brother) and his wife, Evy, and their 4 year old son Jonathan, as well as Jimmy’s son Victor, his wife Carol, their son James and daughter Mary Ann, as well as Jimmy’s daughter Katina, her husband John, and their son James (their other son Emmanuel wasn’t there as he was on holiday in Europe). We also met another Kytherian friend of my Aunt Vikki’s, Maria Londy, who we are also probably related to somehow, as it seems everyone from Kythera is related SOMEHOW! She was kind enough to give us a ride back into the city and drop us off at the hotel. We got back early in the evening, but we were exhausted from a full day, as well as being jet-lagged, as although we had slept well on the plane, we technically had been awake since around 4:00 AM Sydney time! We fell into bed before 9:00.

From left to right: Evy (Nick's wife), Louise (Emmanuel's wife),
Katina (Jimmy's daughter), me, Maria Londy,
Emmanuel, Mary Ann (Victor and Carol's daughter,) and Carol

Nick (George's son), his son Jonathan, and James (Katina and John's son)

Emmanuel

Louise and George