Casimaty Family


Bill Casimaty, Senate candidate 1975 (AOT, PH30/1/5051)

The Casimaty Family first visited Australia when Georgios Kasimatis (1866–1959) worked in Sydney, 1891–96. He returned to Greece, but sent his four children to Australia. All ended up in Tasmania.

Georgios' oldest son Gregory (1890–1972) came to Sydney in 1905 and arrived in Hobart in 1914. He bought a fruit shop and turned it into a restaurant, the Britannia Café, but the brothers, Gregory, Anthony (1897–1977) and Basil (1902–1962), were best known for their wholesale and retail fishing enterprises. Casimaty Bros' fish shop (1918) was a Hobart landmark for decades. They were also among the pioneers of the crayfish and scallop industries, exporting crayfish to Sydney.

The brothers were extremely successful, playing a major role in Hobart commercial life, and Gregory and his wife Katina were particularly known for their philanthropy. Many other family members joined them in Hobart. In the 1940s the family began purchasing farming properties: Llanherne and Acton at Cambridge, Strathayr at Richmond, Christianmarsh at Bothwell, and Stockman at Kempton. Strathayr became particularly well-known for Bill Casimaty's flourishing instant lawn enterprise.

Further reading: H Kalis, Casimaty family, 1891–1996, Hobart, 1996.

Helen Kalis