A Family Affair
The Cominos Bros Cordial Factory in Wee Waa
In the early 1900s, on the Greek Island of Kythera, a little boy watched as his father, Minas Comino unloaded sacks of veggies onto a wharf. In the terrifying moment that he watched his father fall, he had witnessed the heart attack that turned his whole world upside down.
Born in 1897, Andrew Comino became the ‘man’ of his family that day. Andrew, his widowed mother and two siblings were destitute. Fortuitously, his uncle, Dimitrios Megalokonomos, had migrated to Australia in 1896 and, by 1902, had saved enough money to buy the White Rose Cafe in Wee Waa. Learning of his nephew’s plight, he invited Andrew to join the family business so he could earn money to send home.
Eleven-year-old Andrew arrived in 1910 and was introduced to Dimitrios’ 15-year-old son, also named Andrew, who had arrived six months earlier. Although they were cousins, their bond grew so strong that they became known as ‘The Comino Bros.’
When fire destroyed the café that year, a determined Dimitrios rebuilt and named his new place The Olympia Café. Twelve years later, homesick and tired, he sold it to the boys and returned to Greece.
The Olympia was a family affair and as the families expanded, so did the business. When cordials were proving popular, they opened the ‘Comino Bros Cordials Factory’ behind the café. Their children labelled cordial bottles for pocket money and their wives sold cordials in the cafe.
Bottles were expensive to manufacture in those days, so factories branded and retained legal ownership of them. When consumers bought the drink, they were leasing the bottle. Home deliveries were a mainstay of the Comino Bros Cordial business, when the bottles were dropped off, the empties were returned for cleaning and reuse.
Delivering to the nearby towns of Pillaga and Cuttabri, Comino Bros Cordials were a local success story. The factory remained in business until 1964 when Orbells Cordials moved into the area.
