Faye Cocaropoulos (left) and Aphrodite Papadopoulos were reunited after 42 years. Main picture: SARAH MATRAY

BEST friends Faye Cocaropoulos and Aphrodite Papadopoulos were separated a lifetime ago, only to discover 42 years later that they live in the same suburb.

Mrs Cocaropoulos met her friend on board Patris, the ship that brought them from Greece to Australia in November 1964.

Mrs Cocaropoulos was just 18 at the time, but still remembers the day she met her soulmate.

“They put us in the same cabin,” Mrs Cocaropoulos said.

“I said, ‘What’s your name?’ and she said, ‘Which bed you want?’

“She said ‘I’m older by one year, I’ll stay in the bottom (bunk)’.”

They were strangers, but felt more like sisters when the ship docked in Melbourne 22 days later.

Mrs Cocaropoulos was taken to live in Moorabbin with her cousin, while Mrs Papadopoulos lived with relatives in Carlton.

Mrs Papadopoulos said she never thought to check the back of a photograph taken on board the Patris, where her friend had written her cousin’s address.

Faye Cocaropoulos and Aphrodite Papadopoulos on the boat.

They searched for each other for decades until one day, Mrs Cocaropoulos saw that same photo published in the Greek newspaper Neos Kosmos.

“The (newspaper) called me and said, ‘Someone is looking for you’,” Mrs Papadopoulos said.

“I called the number and I knew it. I was shaking.

“I said, ‘(Faye) is that you? Where are you?’ and she said, ‘Here, across Thomastown’.”

The pair could not wait more than one night to see each other and met at Mrs Papadopoulos’s home.

They have both lived in the suburb for almost 40 years.

Neither woman could speak a word of English when they arrived in Melbourne and said the first years in Australia were difficult and lonely.

A young Faye Cocaropoulos and Aphrodite Papadopoulos.

They worked in factories until they married.

“When you’re 18 and you travel by yourself you don’t know anybody there,” Mrs Cocaropoulos said.

“Because we stayed one month with each other, we were like a family, but we lost each other.

“We’ve been friends since that time and still we ring up every couple of days.”

By Cheryl Balfour

Source: whereilive.com.au