War and occupation overshadowed the early youth of Ioannis Dimou from Pigi, Ioannina, a man from Epirus who was “forged” through the hardships of a Greece in crisis. He toiled day and night on construction sites across the Peloponnese and Thessaly, laying the foundations for his own life and those of his loved ones. However, when he realised he could no longer meet the high cost of living in his homeland, he chose to migrate. His destination? The distant Antipodes… He worked tirelessly in the Fifth continent, continuing to build on the foundations he had laid in Greece, adding his own “tessera” to the “blue and white” mosaic of the Greek Diaspora in Australia.