When Leonard Janiszewski started a masters in historical past he was thinking about learning Australia’s numerous inhabitants – its First Nations folks and migrants.
After assembly Effy Alexakis, a photographer and his accomplice in life and
work because the early Eighties, Janiszewski, a social historian and curator with Macquarie College, informed a senior educational he needed to report the historical past of the Greek contribution to Australia.
“Don’t have a look at that,” he was informed. “Should you actually wish to develop into knowledgeable historian, go off to Nice Britain.”
Yeah, nah! The couple went to Greece the place they discovered Australian historical past within the ruins. Houses and full villages had been deserted within the chain of migration.
“Folks had locked up their homes, and left,” stated Alexakis. Some thought they have been going for 5 years, however by no means got here again.
Leonard Janiszewski and Effy Alexakis are Australia’s specialists on Greek cafes, and the contribution of Greek migrants to Australia. Most Greek cafes/milk bars in Sydney are closed now, some stay in nation cities.
Right here Leonard and Effy are pictured in a former greek cafe that retained the store entrance and has been become a contemporary bar.Credit score: James Brickwood
“We went into the homes, and we discovered pictures and letters from Dubbo and different locations – with letterheads – telling kin to come back; ‘There’s work’,” she stated. “Some entire villages had been abandoned as a result of that they had all migrated. So there have been, like, social historical past museums rotting away.”
Among the many discoveries was a trunk in an deserted house in Kythera, one in every of three islands the place most Greek Australians got here from.
It contained a scrap of a map with Australia and New Zealand outlined, an Australian journal Walkabout dated December 1, 1937, and a proper portrait of a younger man by Australian photographer J. Test in 1926.
Through the years they took pictures, recorded oral histories, interviewed Greek Australians in Australia and the households they left behind in Greece, and wrote books, educational publications and exhibited their work.
Alexakis stated many Greeks had been caught in limbo, going again and ahead between Australia, not fairly becoming in anyplace.
Collectively, the couple have documented a historical past of Greek Australians that’s far older and extra numerous than the occupational stereotype of the Greek cafe proprietor.
The primary Greeks to reach in Australia have been seven sailors, convicted of piracy by the British and given a life sentence. They arrived on the Norfolk in 1829. 5 returned to Greek after being pardoned. Two remained. They have been Georgios Vasilakis, Gikas Voulgaris, Georgios Laritsos, Antonis Manolis, Damianos Ninis, Nikolaos Papandreas and Konstantinos Strompolis.
Writing within the Greek Metropolis Instances, Alexakis and Janiszweski stated the following huge wave was those that got here for the gold rush and stayed for different alternatives.
So many migrated that an space of Hill Finish was referred to as Greektown. Its residents have been cared for by Dr Pericles, the second Greek educated physician emigrate.
Others introduced Greek sultanas to domesticate in Mildura. In Queensland, Greeks migrated to chop cane, and ended up controlling the trade and proudly owning sugar cane fields. Others cultivated rice, cotton and ran cattle and sheep.
As Greeks sought a brand new life in Australia they deserted private paperwork, houses and entire villages.Credit score: Effy Alexakis
Greek docs and dentists and different professionals adopted too.
Many who got here for gold ended up in meals service, and anglicised their names. For instance, in Sydney, John Capatchos (Kapazzo/Kapazzos), grew to become an oyster saloon keeper. Others grew to become fishmongers, fruiterers, publicans and cafe proprietors.
This yr, Alexakis and Janiszewski revealed a retrospective of Alexakis’ pictures: Forty Pictures: A Yr at a Time.
The primary picture, taken in 1982, is of her dad and mom Maria and Spiros Alexakis, who ran a fish and chip store, Nita’s Seafoods, in Padstow. Alexakis usually photographed her dad and mom at work – her mom frying, her father on the fish markets.
“However I used to be to not know that this may be the final picture taken of them collectively of their store,” she wrote.
The surprising loss of life of her middle-aged father – quickly after the picture was taken – was the catalyst for the photographer’s search to grasp her father’s transfer to Australia and the sense of “Greekness” that he retained in his new nation.
The final picture of Effy Alexakis’ dad and mom Maria and Spiros Alexakis collectively of their store in Padstow.Credit score: Effy Alexakis
His loss of life turned her curiosity in elevating consciousness of Greeks in Australia past a footnote in historical past into an obsession, Janiszewski says.
Like younger lovers do, they made a pact again then. “Us in opposition to the myopia of misrepresentation,” he wrote. “4 many years later, the alliance has remained steadfast.”
The couple needed to fight the pervasive stereotype of Greek Australians as cafe-owning-dancing-wearers-of-colourful- conventional costumes. (Don’t point out plate smashing.)
They intentionally selected to delay publishing what Alexakis acknowledges is “their best-known” e-book, Greek Cafes and Milk Bars of Australia, till after they’d accomplished two books detailing the historical past and variety of Greeks in Australia.
This month they launched their fifth e-book, The Coronary heart of Giving. It’s a set of pictures by Alexakis that pays homage to the Greek Orthodox priest Father Nektarios Zorbalas and the soup kitchen he operated due to volunteers for the homeless.
It’s a extra private e-book than their others. Began in lockdown, when Alexakis visited the kitchen as soon as per week, it’s a return to the thought of meals, generosity and hospitality that they documented of their e-book on Greek cafes.
For this interview, Alexakis and Janiszewski prompt we meet on the solely cafe in Sydney with indicators of its former Hellenic life.
George Poulos, the late proprietor of the Rio, a Greek cafe in Summer season Hill. Credit score: Effy Alexakis
The Rio in Summer season Hill was operated by George Poulos, a former cane cutter who died in 2015 aged 92. Now a wine bar, it has some authentic options, however not a lot else from its heyday when it had a jukebox and cubicles.
The couple have been collectively for therefore lengthy that they end one another’s sentences, typically making it troublesome to listen to who stated, “We end one another’s sentences. ”
Richard Neville, the Mitchell Librarian on the State Library of NSW, is impressed by the sheer scale and educational rigour behind their work.
By the early Nineties, their analysis had resulted in 30,000 modern pictures, 10,000 historic pictures, 900 oral histories gathered in journeys throughout Australia the place they racked up 20,000 kilometres in some years.
Their analysis informed the story of Greek Australia from the underside up, exhibiting the messy complexity of shifting lives from one nation to a different, Neville wrote within the ahead to Forty Pictures.
Their analysis found photographic proof that it was the Greeks who introduced American tradition to Australian suburbs and nation cities.
The cafes have been a Malicious program for the Americanisation of Australian tradition, stated Janiszewski.
Invoice Florence (Vasilios Florias) being welcomed to Australia, Melbourne, 1922.Credit score: Courtesy of S. Raftopoulos and J. Florence and Greek-Australians: In Their Personal Picture. Nationwide Challenge Archives
Cafe homeowners purchased jukeboxes with American music that had but to hit the airwaves.
They didn’t provide moussaka or lamb, however American meals – hamburgers, ice cream sundaes, milk shakes in chrome cups, and onerous sweet.
They contributed to a significant change in Australian consuming habits previous to the explosion of fast-food franchises, stated Janiszewski.
The names of the cafes conjured up glamour and American life – The New York Cafe, the Capitol, the Niagara in Gundagai, the Paragon within the Blue Mountains, American Bar and the Blue Hen Cafe.
Many house owners travelled to the USA for inspiration on meals and architectural types, bringing again plans for plenty of bling and mirrors.
The Castrission household purchased the Niagara in Gundagai in 1938, and travelled to the USA for concepts.
The type was “American streamline, moderne, artwork deco”, Janiszewski was informed. It was “all colored glass and glossy metallic surfaces, giant reflective mirrors, polished marble, wood cubicles, neon lights, air-conditioning, wave home windows within the entrance”.
It was additionally the Greeks who delivered to nation cities and suburbs the thought of making a spot that stayed open late, the place everybody was welcome – a substitute for the nation pubs that have been principally restricted to males.
Janiszewski stated regardless of that the Greeks confronted prejudice: they weren’t seen as white.
Greek cafe homeowners by no means needed their very own youngsters to run the cafes, seeing them as a option to fund the following era of pros.
Actor Lex Marinos wrote within the preface to the cafe e-book that his grandfather’s cafe was the epicentre of his younger life. “Typically I’d be ashamed to be serving children from college who made enjoyable of my household’s accents and customs,” he wrote.
Peter (Beneto) and Jack (Ioannis) Veneris, on the Blue Hen Cafe in Lockhart, NSW. The Veneris household owned the cafe for 70 years.Credit score: Effy Alexakis
However the cafe was a metaphor for all times, the acts of consuming and consuming, the communal bond and heat of household and pals, shopkeeper and buyer, the entrances and the exits, he wrote.
Alexakis and Janiszewski are actually engaged on their second e-book about Greek cafes. The primary included 150 tales of households, however they nonetheless acquired complaints: “You haven’t acquired my household.”
As they travelled round Australia, it appeared each Greek household knew somebody within the household who had a restaurant, stated Alexakis.
And whether or not you’re of Greek descent or not, practically everybody has a reminiscence of those establishments, which have all however disappeared. The cafes – and oyster bars and suburban fish and chip outlets – elicit large scoops of “I keep in mind when”, notably amongst older Australians.
Alexakis stated she was most proud that a lot of the historical past they documented got here from folks’s private albums. “Distinctive, and uncommon, these pictures belong to folks and to not the establishments.”
Right now they’re nonetheless preventing prejudice and stereotypes, and attempting to extend the illustration of Greek Australians in libraries and historical past.
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Even now, fourth, fifth and sixth era Greek Australians are referred to as migrants.
Why? “As a result of you probably have an extended title, you get referred to as a migrant,” says Alexakis.
The State Library’s Neville says with out the couple’s work, “we’d be nonetheless caught it the age-old fictions that each one Greeks owned milk bars.”
“What their work reveals in regards to the migrant expertise, and the way migration transitions into completely placing down roots in a brand new nation is an actual counterpoint to the stereotypical mainstream views of migration.”
To learn extra: https://cafesandmilkbars.com.au/
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