In Chora, in the location “Prevolaki”, the famous road roller “Olga” is “sunk” and maintained by the municipality of Kythera, which contributed greatly to the paving of the main road of the island in the 50s.
The special history of the roller is highlighted by Eleni Harou in a post on her personal blog, while the accompanying photos are republished by Kythera.News with the kind permission of their owner, Marianthi Kapetaniou.
Below is the text of the post by Eleni Harou.
«The first roller came to Kythera in the 1930s. It was an old technology, steam-driven and was bought by the Community of Kythera from the Prefectural Fund of Attica for 12,000 drachmas. It burned coal and wood many times and for Kythera it was the ’beast« of Kifissia, whose noisy presence always drove the younger children to flee, while the school children gathered and gazed. The driver of the road-roller wrote on the side in white paint the name of his beloved »OLGA« and with this name this relic which so relieved human toil remained in local tradition.
Today the roller, maintained by the Municipality of Kythera, is located at the location «Prevolaki» at the entrance of Chora. For the record, the English surveyor in Kythera, John McPhail, in the 1820s laid the foundations for the construction of the main road in Kythera and other secondary roads. These works were done with chores and were completed gradually with incredible sacrifices by the Kytherian people.
Before the road rollers in road works they used the ’katrakilia" i.e. large cylindrical stones like the mill with a shaft connected to an iron handle and they rolled them with their hands on the surface they wanted to level. The manual rollers were later replaced by mechanical means, the road rollers. Along the road the trucks would unload dammarishia stone and the workers, locals, Carpathians, etc. would grab a stone with a matraca, grind it and make it into a scylla. Then they would spread the scyra on the road, the coarser ones first, the finer ones on top and then the paver would pass by and tread them well. These trodden scythes, or cobblestone, were the old paving system. In the early 50's, the big project of paving the main road from Kapsali to Agia Pelagia was done in Kythera.
In this project in 1953-54 the road roller “OLGA” was also used.»
