The Tobacco Pioneers: Michelides: A Family History

Book Description

Secondhand. Very good condition. Minor wear to book corners and edges.

This history tells the remarkable story of Peter Michelides and his younger brother Michael, who migrated to Western Australia in the early 1900s.

From their modest beginnings on the remote Greek island of Castellorizo in the Eastern Aegen and Port Said in Egypt, the brothers rose to become well-known identities in their adopted home of Perth.

They pioneered a tobacco growing and production empire with their agricultural base in Manjimup in the State's deep southwest. By the 1950s, Michelides Ltd. produced a million cigarettes daily at its landmark factory on the corner of Lake and Roe Streets in Perth. However, by the 1960s, the Federal Government's opening of the market to international tobacco monopolies destroyed the local industry.

At the story's centre are the two self-educated, ambitious, polyglot brothers who by astonishing energy and careful planning and diplomacy became not only tobacco barons of Western Australia but major benefactos and leaders in that State's Greek community. (back cover)