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Romanies arrived in Australia with the first fleet in 1788 from England. Very few were actually identified as Romanies as they travelled under the nationality of the country they came from. Centuries of persecution had made them very cautious and secretive about their true cultural identity. It’s highly likely that this family in the photo from Queensland, which was taken around the turn of the last century, was from the Machwaya group. This group came to Australia from Serbia via Greece and travelled the country in horse drawn vans looking for seasonal work such as fruit picking, farm work, cane cutting, mining, laboring, blacksmithing, horse handling, leather work, metal work, timber mill work and tree felling. Source including the same photo: www.oocities.org/romani_life_society/indexpics/MagApr08.pdf

Brisbane was a centre of early Russian immigration, receiving some of the very first Russians to Australia. Queensland’s café scene was brought to life by Basil Naggih who installed Brisbane’s first espresso machine in his café, which itself was one of the first cafés in Brisbane. A few years later he founded Brisbane’s first coffee roastery. The State Library of Queensland boasts a number of historical items related to Russian history in Queensland. Gowns designed by one of Australia’s most significant fashion designers of the 50s and 60s, Paula Gubar, a Russian immigrant to Brisbane, are held in the Queensland Museum, and many buildings relating to early Russian immigration in Queensland are heritage protected by the Queensland Government, including St Nicholas Cathedral and the famous Mikonoshin “Fairy House”. These are just a few of the ways that Brisbane’s history is dotted with Russianness. Source: www.slq.qld.gov.au/blog/brisbane-australias-most-russian-...

Woolloongabba (Brisbane), Queensland Australia Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia This Russian Orthodox parish, the first in Australia, was established by white Russians fleeing the Russian revolution. For many years they worshipped in St Thomas’s Anglican Church in nearby South Brisbane. In 1925 they purchased a cottage and converted it into a church. It was later moved to the back of the block to make way for the construction of the new church. Since these early days, and indeed since the foundation of the church, services have changed little. Worship is still conducted in the liturgical language, Church Slavonic. There are no pews or chairs and the congregation stands while the smell of incense wafts around singing members. Candles burn before the icons and on the altar. More icons line the walls representing the spiritual beauty of the Kingdom of Heaven. Source: www.stnicholascenter.org/gazetteer/81

Description Spire, 2015 St Nicholas Russian Orthodox Cathedral is situated with its main face to Vulture Street, in a setting of tall mature trees.[1] On the site which rises gently from Vulture Street, and flanked to each side and to the rear by high-set single-story timber buildings of domestic scale, the church building is the central, commanding building in the group. With its white finished walls resembling masonry, symmetrical facade, and distinctive towers, the church stands quite tall and contributes significantly to the streetscape in this part of Vulture Street.[1] In plan, the church is a simple rectangle, with a square attached tower over the front entry and an attached rectangular aisle at each long side.[1] There are three symmetrically placed entry porches at the front Vulture Street facade, with roof forms and bargeboards shaped to the profile of a cupola and surmounted by ball and cross finials. A three-sided apse is centrally located at the rear.[1] The square tower houses a choir space directly above the main entry, and a belfry above that, accessed by a series of simple timber ladders.[1] Above the altar and centrally placed in the main roof is a smaller six-sided tower and cupola.[1] Constructed on a rendered masonry base, the building is timber-framed with a roughcast rendered fibro exterior, save for the western aisle which has been built in rendered masonry subsequent to 1950. The main roof is sheeted in corrugated galvanized iron, and the cupolas and tapering roof to the square tower are made up of flat and curved pieces of galvanized sheeting.[1] Rendered masonry steps provide access to each of the three front entry doors, which have two leaves in a round-headed opening.[1] A path runs from the central entrance to a metal gate, centrally placed in a rendered masonry fence along the street frontage. This fence comprises pillars with incised crosses and ball finials, between which are masonry panels and steel tube and wire infill panels.[1] The interior has a wooden floor and a ceiling that follows the line of the rafters, lined with fibro and VJ boards.[1] In this building, the simple geometric forms, crowned with cupolas and punctuated with tall round-headed windows, are an expression of the canon of Russian religious architecture that dates from Byzantium and that has been constructed here in response to local materials, time, and place.[1] Source: en.wikipedia.org/?curid=44629642

With a large number of Russian immigrants to Queensland in the 1920s, there was a distinct need for expansion of the Russian Orthodox Church beyond the parish which had been established in Brisbane by Father Shabasheff. The increasing number of immigrants in rural areas, esp. the Callide Valley and Childers district, meant that another priest was needed. Antonieff responded to the call and resumed his ministry. Antonieff became acting head of the Russian Orthodox Church in Queensland for three years. In 1932 he was confirmed in the appointment of archpriest and incumbent of the Church of St. Nicholas in Brisbane. His appointment came at the time when the parish was starting to outgrow the small church and it was decided to build a purpose-designed Russian Orthodox church. He strongly supported the fundraising for the new church which was built on the site of the existing church, which would be moved back. The church would also be a memorial to the last Russian tsar, Nicholas II. From 1929 to 1961 he was Archpriest of the Cathedral of St. Nicholas and Head of the Russian Orthodox Church in Queensland. He travelled extensively throughout Queensland, visiting Russian communities. A bearded patriarchal figure, he consolidated the rather sparse foundations left for him by his predecessor, and founded Sunday schools and a library. He was naturalised in 1939. Faced with a further post-war increase of Russian migrants, the synod of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad appointed Father Antonieff protopresbyter of the Church in Australia on 17 December 1951. This position, equivalent to monsignor in the Roman Catholic Church, gave him the primacy of his Church. He held it until a bishop was appointed from overseas, then ministered in Queensland until ill health forced him to retire from full-time duty in 1961. He died at his Brisbane home on 26 August 1962 and was buried in Toowong cemetery. Source: kangaroopointhistory.com.au/photo-gallery/churches/church...