Con Toparis could speak six languages, and before emigrating to Goulburn employed a guard in Egypt to escort his children to and from school. Photos: Toparis family collection.
Born in Alexandria, Egypt, Basil Toparis was only seven when he watched, horrified, as a man was put to the sword and killed.
Almost 80 years later, Basil recounts all the blood on the first floor of an apartment and the sword protruding from the man’s back.
A significant developer in Goulburn today, Basil is the second youngest of six children who were living in a penthouse on the third floor with their Greek parents, Con and Maria, when the lethal attack happened.
Restless for revolution, Egyptians had been marching through the streets and mistakenly thought falling rubble from a balcony above them was deliberately thrown. Seeking revenge, they raced upstairs and killed Basil’s innocent neighbour.
Two years after the stabbing, when Basil was nine, Con made the difficult decision to leave his three businesses, a large bakehouse, taxis and market gardens, where hundreds of men hoed the soil. Living there was too dangerous. Egyptians were turning on Europeans in retribution for years of being treated like slaves.
The family crept out of Alexandria in 1949 with nothing more than the suitcases they carried, and sailed for 33 days on the Greek-owned SS Cyrenia to Melbourne.
Two weeks after their arrival, and living with relatives, they travelled by train to Goulburn to visit another relative, Johnny Spiros, who owned a fish cafe. The Toparises thought Goulburn better suited them than Melbourne. The family of eight squeezed into a two-bedroom apartment above a saddlery shop at the southern end of Auburn Street.
Waiting six months while his life savings were assessed in England for tax, Con found work at the Supertex chenille factory. When his money arrived, he bought a two-bedroom home and the Classic Milk Bar next to a butcher shop in Goulburn’s main street.
It was the beginning of a new chapter that would reshape Goulburn over generations.
The milk bar traded as a general store, selling everything from a needle to a crowbar, according to Basil. Late into the night, the children made paper bags for groceries, cutting the paper and sealing it with glue Maria made from flour and water, and sorted tomatoes in a shed out the back.
Basil and Nick Toparis with their mother Maria in 1944 in Egypt.
Every day, Con opened the shop at 6 am and later in the morning, Basil’s brother Paul and sister Tessie arrived, freeing their father to work in their market gardens until 6 pm. Con would return and work till midnight in the shop and ride his pushbike home.
Preferring work to school, Basil was suspended when he misbehaved in the classroom when he was 14.
“I went home crying, and my dad came home and gave me a hiding because the teacher must have rung him,” he said.
He was invited back to school six weeks later.
“I told them to stick it, and Dad gave me another hiding.”
The family had earlier bought the Green Valley Fruit Shop near the milk bar in the main street, and Con instructed Basil and his brother George to manage it and repay him an interest-free loan of 200 pounds to become owners.
“There were 14 market gardens in Goulburn, run by Australians, Chinese, Italians and Greeks,” Basil said. “Every time we had vegetables, we took them to the fruit shops and they gave us nothing for them.”
So they began selling their vegetables in the Green Valley shop. In their first week of trading, they made 100 pounds.
“It was a tremendous business; we had 14 people working inside the shop, seven days a week,” he said.
Basil and George began a new venture with trucks, dividing the driving between them to and from Batlow, Griffith and Melbourne markets buying fruit. Aged 16, Basil had talked his way into securing a special licence until he turned 21 to drive heavy vehicles, beginning with his first truck, a Commer Knocker that almost killed him.
Early one afternoon between Leeton and Griffith, Basil’s truck’s brakes failed.
Elley Toparis, Michael Tsolakis, Basil and Nick Toparis in the market gardens. Their gardens expanded along land now flanked by Newton Street and MacAlister Drive. The boys filled a 1000-litre tank from a bore and hauled it on a horse-drawn cart to water plants.
“I couldn’t stop it,” he said. “I could see the Riverina Express [train] coming, blowing the horn. When I got closer, I knew I would be killed. I jumped out. Half the train was hauling tractors and the front half was passengers.”
He escaped with a gash in his left leg.
Better luck came later when the Chamber of Commerce organised buses of shoppers into Goulburn from Canberra. The bus stopped 30 metres from the Green Valley shop, and Canberra shoppers stocked up with fruit before leaving for home.
