Name
Vasiliki Nihas
Birthplace
Sydney, Australia
Lives
Canberra, Australia
Your organisation/community Director of Voyaging Pty Ltd
Profile
My name is Vasiliki Nihas. Or rather, it’s Vasilo Nihas if you’re my husband or close family. If you are my bank manager or accountant it’s actually Vasiliki Nihas Bogiatzis. In fact my standing joke is, no-one can forge my signature on account of they can’t spell it or even pronounce it accurately! Come to think of it, my name was Sylvia Nihas for the first 29 years of my life. I can date people on my life spectrum as pre or post my teaching English, History and Drama at Marrickville Girls High School up until 1979. Ironically, when I just wrote Sylvia, I spelt it wrongly first, as Silvia, that goes to show what a long time ago it all seems.
The Damascene conversion of the name occurred when I realised that the reason I had been called Sylvia and not my real name (which is Vasiliki and abbreviates to Vasilo as the diminutive), was for the convenience of the broader non Greek speaking Australian public with whom I might come into contact throughout my life. At birth one of the nurses on hearing my real name was so appalled that she promptly rechristened me Vaseline and Petroleum Jelly, something that so traumatised my youthful mother that she set about on imaginative name reconstruction immediately. Finally it dawned on me that to come of age comfortably in my dual identity and its skin, I might just as well make life difficult for all, myself included, and revert to who I actually was in the privacy of my home.
This was an irrevocable step which (that’s another story) led to a life as a consultant in multicultural policy and implementation (Assistant Secretary in the Office of Multicultural Affairs in Prime Minister and Cabinet….no dad, I didn’t only answer phones and type up correspondence…actually come to think of it?) and the flying of social justice banners. This latter was as a part-time member of the Immigration Review Tribunal for 5 years and as a consultant running workshops across government agencies including the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, the Departments of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, Foreign Affairs and Trade, Industrial Relations, Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business and NSW Premier’s Office, to name drop a few. If I’m totally honest it probably also led to a flair for the dramatic (I know you always said I was a drama queen, Mum, but that’s not what I meant…woops!!! Just realised that Vasiliki in Greek means queen) and a turn towards the arts and cultural diversity. In fact perhaps just the arts when I think of the Dance Strategy for the next decade, that I’ve just finished writing (yes, I do Strategic Planning and Consultation too). I take that last bit about solely the arts, back. Everything happens in the context of a multicultural society if you live in Australia today, so it’s indeed an inescapable part of any subject area I choose to work in.
That probably means we’ve actually come full circle to migration heritage. It’s certainly been my beginning and is my current, if not my end, activity given the number of Museum and Arts Boards I sit on and variously chair. I sincerely hope it continues to be as exciting as it has been for me until now. I feel it, think it and live it and it’s about lots more than my grandmother’s silks and Kastellorizian clothing. For me, it’s about her and the twinkle in her eyes, her wicked humour and the legacy of her impact on my life (and that of her antecedents). It’s not just about museums and shouldn’t end up only there. It is migration heritage which is still alive and kicking and needing to be recorded as legitimate Australian history (OK Yiayia, I know its time to write the next short story). By the way, she and I share the same name, the difference is she really was the drama queen in the family!
