'He was a stranger I had just met,' says Greek woman sent to Australia as 'bride'

"I stopped when we reached the port and I saw the big ship. I took five or six steps back, as though I wanted to run away. My father pushed me inside and the door closed. The ship started its engines and set off for Sydney."

It was 52 years ago when Eleni M. left her village in the mountains of Epirus, northern Greece, as a "bride" headed to Australia. She was barely 18 years old, but times were tough and her father had made up his mind to marry her off overseas so she could have a better life - even if she didn't know the man who would be waiting for her at the end of her voyage except from a photograph.

"I wasn't worried about getting married, but about leaving. A man from our parts who had immigrated to Sydney a few years earlier wanted me as a bride. My father knew his family, so I agreed to go," she told Kathimerini on condition of anonymity, describing an...

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