Efthimia Binios left her island home of Ai Stratis when she was 24. There`s still a village on the island, but a devastating earthquake, followed by bulldozers, demolished it more than 30 years ago.

EFTHIMIA BINIOS AT OPENING OF EXHIBITION: I`m very sad, that`s all. I`m crying.

But now, a collection of old photographs from the island has brought it back to life.

EFTHIMIA BINIOS: Nothing to do. Nothing to do, no find it, except stones. There. This is my house. I`m crying. Bye, bye, spitaki, bye bye.

Professor Yorgos Nikolakakis had gone to Ai Stratis to research a poor, disadvantaged island. But he met a local villager, Vasilis Manikakis, who had documented in photographs the stories of the island. The discovery of the photos led to an exhibition and a book about Ai Stratis.

PROFESSOR YORGOS NIKOLAKAKIS (Translation): It`s about how a small, barren island like dozens of others in the Aegean rose from the obscurity of a long history to become a national symbol, due to political events in our recent history.

The isolation of the island of Ai Stratis, the lack of a safe natural harbour and arid soil have made life difficult for settlers over the centuries. Even before the earthquake, its tiny economy caused many to seek a better life elsewhere. About 200 former Ai Stratis villagers live in Australia. Most left the island in the `50s and `60s. Now, for the first time, they see the role of their small island in Greece`s history.

PROFESSOR YORGOS NIKOLAKAKIS (Translation): I think it`s the first time that anyone has created a group portrait, so systematically, of the world which is the village, and of more or less everyone who was a part of this tiny place, for a period of 30 or 40 years. I believe it is also unique in the history of photography. I only know of painters who have done anything similar.

Vasilis Manikakis captured life on the island from the 1940s to the early `70s. To survive with seven children, he had to be jack-of-all-trades. He owned a bakery, worked his land and took on additional jobs. Photography was both an income and a passion. He died in 1998. Two of Vasilis`s children and their families live in Australia. His son George remembers Vasilis going on photo shoots, mostly on Sundays, when people relaxed or celebrated festivals.

GEORGE MANIKAKIS, PHOTOGRAPHER`S SON (Translation): My dad used those opportunities to shoot rolls of film. He`d develop them, then he`d go back to the farm, leaving me, the young kid, and Granny, to finish the job. We had to dry them out and polish them up.

PETER PAPAGEORGIOU AT GALLERY: Yeah, that`s my father there, the priest and Emanuel Papageorgiou, and because my father was a priest, in any occasion I was first on the photos, you know, the wedding, the funerals, christening, church-goers. I`m first in everything.

But Vasilis Manikakis also captured the darker story of Ai Stratis. A devastating civil war that followed World War II brought a surge of deportees to the island. Most were people who had socialist sympathies or were accused of having them by the government. There were unionists, teachers, doctors, lawyers, members of the intelligentsia or anyone with standing within their community.

PROFESSOR YORGOS NIKOLAKAKIS (Translation): Exile was a way of distancing from political life all those people who could create problems for the regime.

On Ai Stratis, the exiles lived in tents on land owned by the locals. But there was not supposed to be any contact between them.

PHANI NICOLANDIS, PHOTOGRAPHER`S DAUGHTER: Yes, cause I adored my teacher. He told us that we shouldn`t speak to the exiles, if we passed by, to turn our face on the other side and I was very upset, because we had them in tents in the upper place of our garden and they were very friendly people, very clean, everything they had with flowers, clean. They were polite, discrete. They didn`t take our foods, like there were fruits in front of them, but they could pick up something if they were not given.

ELIZABETH ZIROS, PHOTOGRAPHER`S DAUGHTER: Oh, yes, we played with, you talked, but till you grow up, I tell you that`s before, you stopped to be talking to these people and only, doesn`t matter how you love them, it`s how you remember, like a young girl, you give the `good morning` with your eyes and they give you `good morning` back with the eyes and that`s it. You have two worlds. We separate. Sometimes you feel sorry, you feel upset, you feel you`re not enough good, you feel guilty. You know, he was your friend till yesterday. Make you feel a little bit guilty. I say `guilty`. I feel guilty. I want to scream, to say `good morning` and `how do you do today` or things and you can`t even do a `good morning`. Yes, it make me feel guilty.

The island experienced a boom as the population exploded. Only one-third was local and the rest exiles. With the outsiders came demand for produce and they taught Vasilis to bake bread with the latest methods and helped him with his photos.

GEORGE MANIKAKIS (Translation): Hagelis and Arvanitakis were two of the top five photographers in Greece. They showed my dad many of the secrets of the trade and I can tell you, with his experience he took better photographs than they did.

The influx of exiles brought with them city culture and the arts. Many went on to become famous and they made life on the island a cultural feast.

ELIZABETH ZIROS: Theatres, the theatres in the big gardens. They put a little - a big tent, and they make into the theatres. And we enjoyed it. Sometimes, the police, they come and they not give us the right to go. But, till I was young, not only me, all the young girls and boys in the village, we go close to the exiled people and they give us under their coats, they put us a little hat and altogether we go in groups. The police don`t notice us and slowly, slowly we go in. We sit in the chairs under the coat until everything go dark and the theatre open. We go, go slowly up and we look at it and decide how we go out again. That was the most exciting time we have. Because it`s not going like that. We going with those little sneaky things. We enjoyed it. We enjoyed both, the theatre and the way we go in. It was lovely.

When Professor Yorgos Nikolakakis went to Ai Stratis for his research, he knew he was in unchartered waters. The civil war and mass deportations remain very sensitive issues in Greece.

PROFESSOR YORGOS NIKOLAKAKIS (Translation): The history of the civil war and of the exiles was never formally recognised. In Greece, after the end of World War Two the resistance fighters were not the victors. Unfortunately, the victors preferred to support those who had collaborated with the Germans instead of those who had fought the Germans. Formal history never did justice to these people. I think that part of history is still kept quiet.

When the exhibition of the Ai Stratis photographs came to Sydney, it brought with it a personal drama.

ELEFTHERIOS GIANNAS: Tonight, we come here to the exhibition and we really get surprised. My wife, she saw her brother here. She didn`t know he was exiled in that island. She knew, she was very young then but, unfortunately she came here tonight, or fortunately, and she saw her brother and she screamed from happiness, saw her brother Dimitris Bagaliris, and she said "My brother`s here, my brother`s here." She jumped from happiness and crying, but then...

IRENE GIANNAS: Cry, first cry, say "My brother`s here, my brother, my brother." Just say "Look, the youngsters here, the youngsters. And I say "Here`s my brother, here`s my brother." I start crying the first time. First time, so exciting. I`m so happy now I saw him here.

Irene Giannas always knew that Ai Stratis was a desolate place of exile. What she didn`t know was that her brother, now a grandfather in Athens, spent a year of his life there. She never imagined it had its own vibrant community.

IRENE GIANNAS: At school I learn where is the Ai Stratis, I learned in school Ai Stratis, that these people goes there. It`s not much. They don`t talk politics in my home, yeah. They don`t talk. Maybe they don`t like to remember bad days.

PROFESSOR YORGOS NIKOLAKAKIS (Translation): Ai Stratis is a name that is very familiar to many Greeks, even if they don`t know exactl6y where it is on the map, because it is a reminder of exile which unfortunately did not leave any family unaffected.

As international pressure forced the Greek government to cut back on deportations, the number of exiles decreased, families lost their incomes and George Manikakis left for Australia, along with many others. The earthquake in 1968 destroyed most of the buildings on the island. The military regime of the time bulldozed what remained, replacing it with substandard, uniform matchbox-style houses.

IRENE GIANNAS: But today, I`m so, so, so exciting, happy. I think I saw here something from...

MAN: Young age, huh?

IRENE GIANNAS: No, something from all Greece here. When I saw my brother here, I thought all Greece here now, all Greece.

MAN: She feels she is in Greece now.

IRENE GIANNAS: I feel all Greece here in my arms now. I`m so happy. This corner I think it`s mine. Yeah.