My personal story - Part 5 - Mark Foys and Ladies in Black

When I first watched the brilliant Australian film Ladies in Black, I told my family to watch it too. Set in 1959, in an elegant department store, these characters showcase a time my parents knew well. 

They were the “new Australians” in the neighbourhood. A door within the backyard fence was an opportunity to share my dad’s infamous BBQ souvlakia and my mum’s homemade traditional Greek food with the Hillmans next door. Mrs. Joyce Hillman really loved mum’s potato and garlic dip (skordalia). Mr. Peter Hillman loved my dad’s perfectly marinated, charcoal BBQ’d lamb souvlakia. 

Dad offered to give Mr. Hillman a lesson on preparing and cooking them himself, but when he asked our dear neighbour how it went, Mr. Hillman humbly admitted that it didn’t quite turn out like my dad’s souvlakia. It was dad’s specialty, and both my parents were raised to practice the Greek concept of Philotimo. There was always plenty to share with others, including from my dad’s beautiful vegetable garden.  

The Hillmans had two children. From memory of stories, their daughter, Christine, was about my mum’s age, and their son, John, a teenager, when my brother was a boy. I was born six years after my brother Peter.

When John’s mum, Joyce, was in her last days in a nursing home, he came back to the old neighbourhood to tell us. Perhaps his mum remembered that era and time in her life, as tends to happen in such moments in life. The memories for all of us in those decades was one of respect, dignity, kindness, looking out for one another, and hospitality. 

Sadly and regrettably, we didn’t get the chance to visit Joyce Hillman before she passed away. We attended her funeral at St. Declan’s at Penshurst. For me, attending Joyce’s funeral felt like the end of a chapter in a book on one’s life. Living and growing up in Hurstville, my childhood was a mixture of the older Australian generation and younger European migrants, raising families. 

I loved the elders in my neighbourhood. I loved having conversations on my way home from school, including at the lawn bowls club up the road, with Miss Frost a few doors down, and a number of others. Now, it’s a very different suburb, turned city, that’s overpopulated and dense. It’s like this in many suburbs where property development has replaced the green and aesthetically pleasing suburb that I prefer to raise a family. 

But that’s my experience growing up in a single dwelling with a backyard, a Californian bungalow home, running around with friends and going to the park to play. With all this social injustice, political interference and systemic abuse that I’ve recently experienced in our “progressed” society, it makes me yearn for simpler days. I feel a need to escape by going to a place like my mum’s village in Greece, to breathe in mountain air. I feel so alone here, right now. 

Jeannie Baker, collage artist and author of award winning picture books, displays urban development really well in her collages. One of my favourites when studying Education at the University of Sydney, was a book titled Window. I recommend this book for generating conversations around the environment and town planning. As the child grows up, he looks out the window at new roads being built, new houses etc (and you know it’s over when a McDonalds is established). When he becomes a father and is holding his own child in his arms, looking out the window of his new home, it’s a view like the one he experienced in his childhood. But we can all guess the continuation of that story. There are literally no words in this book. Only collages that speak volumes. (See https://www.jeanniebaker.com/book/window/).

Going back to the movie Ladies in Black, it also reminded me of stories my mum would tell me about Mark Foys, the department store that was just a stroll up from Oxford Street in the City of Sydney. Mum was living in Bourke St., Surry Hills with her brother’s family, before meeting and marrying my dad. For the wedding dress, Mark Foys was the place to go. My mum and her sister-in-law, my aunt Eugenia, took that stroll to the now heritage site of Mark Foys for the dress.

https://www.nfsa.gov.au/latest/beautiful-vintage-european-fashion-mark-foys

It was a time of quality products and experienced customer attendance. Like the Slovenian lady in the evening dress department in the movie (played beautifully by Julia Ormond), when my mum went to find her wedding dress at Mark Foys, the lady took one look and brought out the dress that was perfect for mum. This was late 1969, a decade later to when the movie was set. The dress was for a 4 January 1970 wedding. 

I share a photo. The lace, the gloves, the pearl drops on the empire waistline. It was perfect for mum. 

My mum escorted by my uncle, Theodore Babilis, on her wedding day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

My mum was a 17 year old girl when she boarded the ship, Patris, destined for Australia. My pappou couldn’t let go of her at Piraeus, until a crew member finally said, “Mr. Babilis, we have to leave. You need to decide.” There were already three children in Australia. This was the fourth, the youngest daughter.

My grandfather asked a nice middle-aged couple to look after his young daughter on the journey. That couple, as discovered years later after my mum had married my dad, were my dad’s aunt and uncle. Providence or what? My mum would not meet my dad for a couple more years upon her arrival in Australia. She and my dad would not learn about this coincidence until after my brother was born, when dad's uncle George visited his nephew (my dad) in our family home in Hurstville. That's a whole other amusing story. I do wonder if there’s an element of fate in our lives. It's stories like this that make me wonder. 

Today, the heritage preserved building of Mark Foys is the courthouse of the Downing Centre, as I realised, when I was fulfilling my civic duty on a jury panel a couple of years ago. 

If only that civic duty was truly reciprocated by the NSW government in office under the questionable leadership of Chris Minns, who is the state MP of my electorate of Kogarah.

Within Museum Station, on my way to the Downing Centre, there was a display of photos from the national archives, that included customers at Mark Foys. Then as you exit the station, you encounter the preserved exterior of the Mark Foys building. 

 

I was transported to the 60s and the era my parents migrated to Australia. I thought about what they went through in Greece that brought them to the other side of the world. 

Then I would snap back to the reality of the present, and what a “leader” and local MP of the party my family loyally voted for a lifetime, did to us, and I felt sick. 

Ironically, while doing my civic duty at the Downing Centre, a distressing and grossly negligent phone call incident occurred with SafeWork NSW and its “advisors”. What public servants employed by the NSW Department of Customer Service need to realise is that this call on a Monday morning, that triggered another incident of distress, ended up costing taxpayers approximately $400,000. Minister Dib and Minister Cotsis need to be aware of this, as does the Secretary of the NSW Department of Customer Service, Mr. Graeme Head.

We’ll get to that part of the story later. Much later. I’m still only up to June 2020 (although SafeWork NSW first enters my story around September 2020). 

 

A woman trying on hats at Mark Foys c.1960s - archive photos displayed at Museum Station

See also https://archives.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/nodes/view/1724385 and https://mhnsw.au/stories/sydneys-home-furnishing-stores/mark-foys/

From the National Film and Sound Archive Australia - Mark Foy's Fashions - Mash up.

A quote from a comment a viewer made about the movie Ladies in Black:

“‘Ladies in Black’ was a wonderful and nostalgic movie, especially when one has lived through those days… my mother was a Lady in Black, she worked at Mark Foys in the lace department for many years. The movie brought back all the memories of those days, Hyde Park, Sydney Harbour, the Blue Mountains, the trams and the new double decker buses. The days when retail shops actually served people…I loved the fashions…”

Ladies in Black - Movie Trailer