Person: Elias Domine

Name:
Elias Domine

Occupation:
Hawker

Religion:
Orthodox

Birthplace:
Zahle, Syria/Lebanon

Arrival In Australia:
1880s

Years Lived In Brisbane:
1890-1893

Date Of Naturalization:
1902 (New Zealand)

Year Of Birth:
1879

Place Of Death:
Sydney

Date Of Death:
1950

Spouse

  • Marriage Date: 1/01/1910
    Birthplace of spouse: Damascus
    Heritage of spouse:
    Place of marriage: Lebanon

Story

Elias Domine (Doumany) was a young child when his parents, Ameen and Mary, migrated to Australia where they worked as hawkers. In August 1890, the Police Magistrate at the Maryborough (Qld) Bench sent the 11 year old Elias to the Lytton Reformatory for two years as a neglected child. Both Mary and Ameen wrote to the colonial Secretary’s Office requesting Elias be released. Initially this request was refused as the Superintendent believed Elias had been mistreated by his father. However, when Ameen wrote saying they were returning to Syria and wanted Elias to go with them, the Superintendent responded saying that while he believed the father ‘frequently illused him, his mother always treated him very kindly, and the boy would like to go back to them’. While the Superintendent was concerned that on his release Elias would again travel ‘in the colony hawking with his father’, he agreed to his release on the condition the family were truly leaving the colony because ‘it would be more cruel to keep him here where he would be friendless after his parents had left, then to allow him to accompany them to Syria’.

After his father returned to Lebanon in about 1899, Elias moved to New Zealand and was a storekeeper in Dunedin. He was naturalized in 1902. In 1910, he returned to Lebanon and married Mary Abayd. The couple came to Australia in that year, living initially at Redfern and later Randwick.

References

Queensland State Archives, Series ID S5253.
St George Antiochian Orthodox Cathedral, St George Cathedral and Its People: Past, Present and Future, Double Bay, NSW: Longueville Media, 2004, pp. 142-143.