By Christine de Kock
A WEST Footscray man has produced a DVD highlighting the experiences of nine Macedonians in Victoria.
The DVD titled: Macedonian Immigrant Stories in Victoria covers several areas of the Macedonian migrant experience.
Spase Velanovski, president of the Macedonian Community Welfare Association, coordinated the project on behalf of the organisation.
“One person who was interviewed talked about her mother’s ambivalence in coming over,” Mr Velanovski said.
“Her father came across first, and when her mother was being driven from the airport to Footscray, she saw the weatherboard houses with verandahs.
“She exclaimed: Where have you brought me? This looks like cowboy country!
“She had only seen houses like this in the westerns … maybe she was expecting brick houses.”
The DVD also talks about the practice of ‘pechabla’ among Macedonians.
“There is no real translation of this word,” Mr Velanovski said.
“It means basically to work away from home.
“This is a Macedonian custom born out of poverty and became common place, it’s kind of a rite of passage for many Macedonian men in their role as a family provider.”
Mr Velanovski said pechabla was the reason behind much of the Macedonian immigration to Australia in the 1960s and 1970s.
“The original idea was, you came to Australia, work up a small fortune and then you go back.
“Many men came with that intent and they came out on their own.
“Then they said: I’m going to be staying a bit longer than I thought and they brought out their wives and their children.”
There are about 30,000 Macedonian-speaking people in Victoria and the City of Maribyrnong has the fifth highest number of Macedonians per a local government area.
“They came largely as unskilled labourers because that’s what the Australian Government wanted at the time,” Mr Velanovski said.
He added the issue of identity was also a prevalent theme in the DVD.
Macedonia became a republic in 1991 but in the early 20th century the Balkan wars resulted in Macedonia being absorbed by the then Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Greece.
“(These immigrants) were all born in Macedonia and all identified as Macedonians but there was some differences in that they spoke different second languages and had different nationalities,” Mr Velanovski said.
He said this experience gave one Macedonian psychiatrist who was interviewed on the DVD a particular appreciation and sensitivity about being a migrant.
“The psychiatrist does work internationally… he developed trans-cultural psychiatry in Victoria, he pioneered it.”
The DVD was funded by the Victorian Multicultural Commission and is available at request by contacting Dina Sterjovska on 9367 6044.
