The Australian-born Greek honoured in Lesvos as a volunteer firefighter
Source: NEOS KOSMOS
Pelagia Malama was born in Australia to Greek parents. She lived in Hay – New South Wales, until 1979, when she returned to Greece with her parents and her brother, Stathis. On December 4, 2025, she was honoured by the Volunteer Forest Firefighters Group of the Municipal Unit of Polichnitos, Lesvos, for her contribution to the creation and operation of the group.
She is — paradoxical as it may sound — a person with the flame of action burning within her, having dedicated a large part of her life to firefighting and to strengthening and multiplying volunteer forest firefighting groups.
She is the daughter of Heraklis Malamas from Palaiochori, Plomari, and Despina Mantzourani from Agia Marina, Mytilene, and consistently strives to leave a positive imprint on local communities.
The Association of Volunteer Firefighters on Lesvos was founded in 2001. Malama’s relationship with volunteerism began in 2010, when she became a member of the Association, and four years later she was certified by the Hellenic Fire Service. From that point on, her active involvement in field operations began, alongside her participation on the Board of Directors. She has served two terms as President, specifically from 2021 to 2024.
The Award
On July 23, 2022, Malama was called to assist in the large wildfire in Vatera, an extremely challenging experience, as she herself describes it. For six consecutive days and nights, volunteer forest firefighters from all parts of the island stood side by side with professional firefighters.
As a result of this devastating fire, residents of the Polichnitos area requested the support of the Association in order to establish the Volunteer Forest Firefighters Group of the Municipal Unit of Polichnitos.
“The Polichnitos group is my new child,” Malama said during the award ceremony, adding that its “birth” was supported by the Municipality of Western Lesvos and the North Aegean Region, but above all by ordinary people, including members of the Greek diaspora.
“Once a volunteer, always a volunteer,” she says characteristically, emphasising in her interview the significant number of active volunteer forest firefighters on Lesvos, which currently stands at around 150 and continues to grow.
As she recounts, the first volunteer unit was established in Plomari, followed by the one in Mytilene. In 2015, after the fire in the Amali Forest, the Volunteer Group of Agia Marina was founded. In 2018, the Association contributed to the establishment of the Volunteer Firefighting Unit of Gera, while at the same time supporting the strengthening of the Eressos group. The most recent initiative concerns the Polichnitos group, which today is the largest certified group within the Municipality of Western Lesvos.
A Multifaceted Activity
In addition to being a certified volunteer forest firefighter, Pelagia Malama has also been a certified amateur radio operator since 2016. She served as a member of the Plomari Tourism Development Committee during the Kapodistrian Municipality of Plomari, under Mayor Michalis Mamacos, and was recently elected Vice President of the Community of Agia Marina.
She is the mother of Grigoris and Heraklis Pantellis and the grandmother of Filippos–Emmanouil. In the near future, she is expected to travel to Patras to receive her degree in Business and Organisational Administration, as an academic student of the Hellenic Open University.
Christmas 2004 in Hay, NSW
At Christmas 2004, she returned to Australia with her father and visited the home of her childhood in Hay, New South Wales, where Heraklis Malamas had once carved his initials. Today, the warmth of that home is enjoyed by another family. They were hosted by relatives who chose to remain in Australia, to build their families there and put down roots, as Pelagia Malama recounts with tears of emotion in her eyes.
“When you are the child of migrants and you return to your homeland, I believe you love Greece and your place even more, and you give more of yourself. Australia is also my homeland; it is where my first experiences and my earliest thoughts were formed,” she said, concluding with wishes of health and love for the new year and sending her warm greetings to Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide.
*Androniki Koutsavli is a journalist at the newspaper Empros of Mytilene, a member of the Union of Journalists of Daily Newspapers of the Peloponnese, Epirus and the Islands, and a member of the Hellenic Association of Political Scientists.
The original article: belongs to NEOS KOSMOS .
