«To preserve our Karitsa identity and foster our love for the village"

Karitsa, a mountain village with folk chiefly involved in sheep and goat herding, in olive growing and in land tilling has always had a lot of people emigrating in search of better life opportunities and living conditions.  Early on that search lead them to more prosperous nearby villages and then to larger provincial centres and places further away.  Thus all people by the name of "Karitsiotis" living in the rest of Laconia and in neighbouring Arcadia have ancestry originating in Karitsa and over time have become known by this surname.  They took on this new surname because that is what the locals in the new villages they moved into called them; "Karitsiotis", meaning "one from Karitsa."

The first specific group of emigrant Karitsiotes that can be traced is believed to be that of the Triandafilos Family.  Members of that family, which no longer exists in the village, began leaving as early as the 1720's and 1730's. The first group went to the island of Spetses, a second group headed for Astros Kinourias and a third group went to Gramousa, present day Ambelohori.  A later group settled in Molaous, some fifty kilometres from the village itself.  This type of internal emigration, to nearby villages and larger provincial centres, has continued ever since.

The first notable wave of emigrants from Karitsa to places outside of Greece began around 1890 when many left for the United States.  This continued until the 1920's when the economic decline in the United States reduced the flow of Greek immigrants there.  The most rapid overseas emigration of Karitsiotes, however, occurred in the post war years when within a period of 20 years 40 percent of the villagers left.  Whilst some took the familiar route for the United States, others sailed the North Atlantic bound for Canada and a few packed their suitcases and boarded the train for Germany. For most emigrating Karitsiotes, however, a new door was opening up, that of far away Australia. 

With tears in their eyes and a heavy heart they bid farewell to their beloved village and travelled to the port of Piraeus to board the awaiting ocean-liners.  They sailed through the legendary Aegean Sea and the calm Mediterranean before moving through the Suez Canal and the Read Sea.  After that the vastness of the Indian Ocean awaited them and then the storm and tempest of the Southern Ocean; all this in a trip of some 20 or so days to reach their final destination.  In Australia most Karitsiotes settled in Adelaide which is often called "Athens of the South".  The first Karitsiotes to arrive in Adelaide were Katsambises; 29 year-old Yannis Katsambis together with his 26 year-old wife Hristina and one-year-old son Dimitri.  They arrived in 1954.  Very soon they were followed by many others.   

What are the reasons that drove so many Karitsiotes to breach the tyranny of distance and to settle some 12 000 kilometres away from their homeland on the other side of the world?  Whilst a lot is often made about the Greek sense for adventure and discovery the more real and basic reasons stem from the impoverished socio-economic conditions that have burdened Greek society ever since the domination of the country by the Ottoman Empire.  Though Greece was liberated in 1821 it was not able to make significant headway in developing an independent national economy.  By the time Australia launched its immigration program in the late 1940's Greece was economically on its knees.  Following the Great Depression of the 1930's it was also to endure the misery and evils that proceeded the war ravaged forties.

Many Karitsiotes sought a way out.  Most left with the intention to return within five years.  They wanted to find well paying work to save enough capital to buy a house and land on their return, or to pay family debts, or to provide for the dowry of girls of the family.  One thing for certain however was that in the overwhelming majority of cases emigrants left with the firm intention to return once they had accumulated a reasonable capital to better their life and status in the village. In reality for most this was no more than a five-year dream that never become a reality.  Soon enough most were reasonably happy with their life in Australia, but most importantly with the prospects for their children. 

This, despite the fact that they were brought over chiefly as factory fodder for rapidly expanding manufacturing industries.  Thus in most cases migrants took on the heaviest, dirtiest, most dangerous and least paying jobs in steel foundries, car making plants and appliance factories.  As an example Karitsiotes in Adelaide were employed in the assembly line of General Motors Holden, in the foundries of Perry Engineering and Kelvinator as well as Rubber Mills.  Rubber Mills were particularly popular because workers were expected to work four hours overtime daily which of course meant a higher wage packet on a regular basis.  During the holidays to build up their savings they would often go fruit picking as a whole family, including children, along the Murray Valley.  For the rest of the year whilst the men were working in factories women from Karitsa would join women from Geraki and other Laconian villages working in the orchards and market gardens of the Adelaide Hills.  On the back of a small truck managed by Nikos Mitris from Geraki they would go to pick cherries, apples, peas, broccoli and other produce grown in the Adelaide Hills.

Emigration from Karitsa continued and was to peak even higher from 1961 to 1966.  During that time most Karitsiotes in Australia had settled close together in Goodwood, an inner Adelaide suburb which to this day has many descendants from the village living there. After 1970 the migration tide to Australia began to ebb.