Lorne Victoria Australia
Christos and Vasilios ‘Bill’ Raskatos operated the famous Fish Shop in the Lorne Fishermen’s Co-operative building at the Lorne Pier for many years. Christos came for a six-month contract in 1969 and stayed. The Co-op was taken over as a private business and very successfully run by the Raskatos brothers, Bill and Christos. The Co-op ceased trading in 2017. The pier that the boats sat on, along with the cranes, was poorly maintained by the then Port authority and was condemned in 2003 and a new pier was opened in 2007.
Christos Raskatos
Christos Raskatos, was a poet and fishmonger, and a larger-than-life character. He wrote poetry and taped it to the fishery windows offered personal messages of love and loss within the community. In 2002, Susan’s painted a portrait of Christos and was hung behind the Lorne Fisheries shop counter beside the Rob Coy fish paintings.
Christos Raskotas painting by Susan Sutton in 2002
Another Swim, Pier to Pub poem by Christos, 2011
Christos Rasktos with crayfish. (LHS photo B871)
Cynthia Wynhoven’s Interview of Christos in 2005
I suspect that when visitors to Lorne buy fish from Christos at the pier, they take away more than their purchase. More than likely they have read the poem or two stuck on his windows before they enter, but even that doesn’t prepare them for the charismatic poet inside. Christos exudes passion – passion for life, for the sea, for his words and for people. I asked if he could explain why he was like this.
“I suppose it’s a touch of madness, a celebration of life.
I’m saying we’re here and alive. You can touch people this way.”
His belief in humanity allows him to see beauty in everyone but he says in his poetic way,
“Meeting beautiful people can be like a cold drink on a hot summer’s day.”
There’s a telling portrait of Christos hanging on the wall in the shop. It was painted by popular local artist Susan Sutton and it describes him better than words could ever say. He is in awe of her accurate perception and portrayal of his character. He’s passionate about that too. The story of this unique Lorne character begins in a village in Greece with a school run by an exceptionally gifted teacher, who recognized and nurtured an exceptionally gifted student. At home, Christos’s father encouraged his continual ‘scribblings’ and brought books home for him to read as he could afford to buy them.
But it was at school under the guidance of his beloved Professor Pappadopoulos that his gift took flight. “One day, the professor took me to his house, which he shared with his wife, and showed me a room full of books – wall to wall books. He then made it very clear to me that I could borrow any one I liked as long as when I’d read it I’d come and discuss it with him. It was like being a kid in a lolly shop. I remember the first book I chose was Jules Verne’s, ’80 Thousand Leagues under the Sea’. It was mesmerizing.” From then on a new world of words opened for Christos. The professor had given him the key.
Finishing his primary school education, Christos sat the entrance exam for the Gymnasium (secondary school), passed with flying colours and awaited semester one with eager anticipation. It was not to be. In 1964, reluctantly at age 14, he left Greece to come with his family to Geelong. “My inexplicable passion to write continued to drive me,” he remembers. Although he had to go to work during the day to help pay off the family home, he attended night school at the old Swanson Street State School to learn English. I studied very hard because I wanted so badly to perfect my English to read poets like Yeats and Byron in their own language. And I did,” he said with deserved satisfaction.
How do you measure such determination and success?
Christos worked in Geelong until 1969 when Henry Love persuaded him to come to Lorne and help with the building of the Fishermans’ Co-op. “That was the beginning of my love affair with this magnificent place and it’s still going strong. To me, Lorne is a goddess.” Did he ever go back to Greece and tell Professor Pappadopoulos what he had achieved?
“In the 80’s I went back for the first time. I rented a car in Athens, took with me a big bottle of Scotch and a carton of Marlboroughs and drove straight to my old village to find him. It was an emotional reunion. We went over old times and ‘dug up the graveyard’, we discussed literature in the world and he told me how proud he was of me. He is gone now. He was a treasure”
Christos considers his talent a gift which he has a moral obligation to cultivate and share. We who read his poems and visit his fish shop are the fortunate recipients. His poems not only record local events, situations and special characters that inspire him but occasionally he gives us a glimpse of his soul. “Mostly you see about 80% of me but sometimes I show 100% – like the time I wrote about the death of my friend Allan Patterson.” This beautiful poem is on the shop wall pinned to the obituary from the paper.
And the pier? ” It hurts. I’ve been so close to it. I’ve written a lot of gut wrenching words trying to come to terms with the demise of my beautiful pier. I understand that Nature is claiming its own but with it we are losing part of our history and some of our culture. It doesn’t make it hurt any less.”
I asked if there were any other passions he wanted to share. “Oh, yes! I want to mention another goddess in my life. She is a gift from Mt Olympus who came when I was drowning. She’s an educator who is passionate, who believes in me and encourages me to write continually. I love her to death!” I was relieved to learn that Christos has every word he has ever written, which begged the question – Would he create an anthology? “Oh, one day, if someone convinces me I should.” he said uncomfortably. “It’s a touchy point. To me my poetry is like a baby. It’s about not wanting to lose control of the private bits. There’s so much euphoria and ‘feel good’ about the fact that the poems are mine. I feel I can be selfish about it. T.S. Eliot said, “The moment you publish you are no longer a poet’. I believe that.” In the meantime he is enjoying writing and reliving the past perhaps, with his eight year old son, Tom, who has already told him, “I’m a poet too Dad”
Tom’s Geelong School recognise and encourage his writing. It looks as if they have embraced his Dad as well, as their joint poems appear in educational publications. The poem I’ve included here was written by them both one Saturday morning while sitting outside the Manifold Heights Primary School, because Tom understands about Muses and believes the Muse lives there. “Who am I to say where the Muse lives?” Christos asks. I couldn’t help hoping that this Muse might be the one to convince him to put his life’s work in a book, part of which would be a proud poet’s recorded history of Lorne when he lived here but all of which would be a treasure his son could hold to his chest and say proudly, “This is my Dad”
[Lorne Independent ‘Chistos and the Professor’s Key’ by Cynthia Wynhoven, 2005]
Chistos Raskotos
Sources:
- Lorne Historical Society Collections
- ‘Susan Sutton the artist and her art’ by Marion Pescud, 2018
- Lorne Independent ‘Christos and the Professor’s Key’ by Cynthia Wynhoven, 2005
