Kondelea Elliott (1917–2011), union official and women's rights lobbyist, was the daughter of a Greek migrant father, Nicholas Xenodohos, who had come from the Queensland canefields via Sydney, and an Australian mother who had left school at the age of eight and performed in a circus. Both were member of the Victorian Socialist Party. In the 1920s her father opened two cafes in George Street, Sydney. At fourteen, she left school to train as a shorthand typist and became involved in Young Communist League activities, speaking on the Communist Party stump in the Domain and engaging in left-wing theatre. Known as Della Nicholas, in 1940 she was elected to the central council of the NSW branch of the Federated Clerks' Union; in 1943 she became its assistant secretary, remaining in the post for five years. During the 1940s, as a delegate to the NSW Labor Council and the ACTU, she campaigned for equal pay for women, and during the 1950s worked for the Waterside Workers' Federation. In this way she met Eliot V Elliott, long-term leader of the Seamen's Union of Australia; they married, and she worked in their federal office from 1955 to 1988, maintaining its records and editing the monthly Seaman's Journal. In retirement, she researched union history and helped establish the Jessie Street Women's Library, while breeding champion Scottish terriers. She received a NSW Premier's Award for Community Service in 2000. Her name is perpetuated in her gift of an annual scholarship for an Aboriginal student to the Women’s College at the University of Sydney.
