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ANCIENT GREEKS: ATHLETES, WARRIORS, HEROES and… THIEVES
One of the first thing that I discovered about my late lamented father in law upon meeting him for the first time was that unbeknownst to us, we had crossed paths years before, attending the National...
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SUMMER PENINSULAR MALAISE
The twelve days of Christmas are well and truly over, even if yet again for another year, their termination was not marked by a mass migration to Princess Pier, for the ritual blessing of the waters...
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CHANGING THE DATE
When the Constitution first came into being in 1901, Section 127 provided that ‘in reckoning the numbers of people of the Commonwealth, or of a State or other part of the Commonwealth, aboriginal...
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BETWEEN SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS: TELLING OUR OWN TALE
The other day a friend was relating an experience he had in the eighties. A university student, on his days off, he would assist his mother who was a cleaner, to clean corporate offices in Melbourne’s...
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GRIKO, GREEK AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LANGUAGE
Over the holidays, a mother heard my children and I speaking Greek to each other at the park. Introducing herself, and her child who spoke perfect Greek with an Athenian accent, we chatted in Greek for...
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WHEN WE ABUSE OUR ELDERS
“My daughter-in-law keeps on making appointments for me to have a brain scan,” my elderly client tells me, his voice shaking. “I refuse to go. That’s what she did with her father. She had him declared...
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ΜΠΑΜΠΑ, ΠΟΤΕ ΘΑ ΠΑΜΕ ΣΤΗΝ ΠΑΡΕΛΑΣΗ;
The night before my first parelasi, I couldn’t sleep. On the couch by my bed, my mother had laid out the costume my aunt had brought for me a few months before from Greece. As she ironed each pleat of...
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RUSSIA, UKRAINE AND US
The last free Greek territory to succumb to the Ottomans was the Principality of Theodoro, in the Crimea in 1475. Since time immemorial, the lands of Ukraine and Southern Russia, currently enmeshed in...
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STELLA
They found Stella dead in her living room, slumped over her armchair, in the afternoon. She had been dead for less than a day. When the police took her body away, they figured that the last person she...
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WOMEN OF 1922 AND CATASTROPHE
As my great-grandmother would cook in the kitchen, she would point to the dish she was preparing and say: «Αυτά μας τα μάθνεσκαν οι Αούτσες» (These were taught to us by the Aoutisses). An Aoutissa was...
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KARAGIOZIS GOES TO GREEK SCHOOL
My late uncle Stathis was my first ever contact with Karagiozis. Possessed of a deep, rumbling voice, he would insert of all the great Greek shadow puppet play hero’s catchphrases in all of his...
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LETTING LOOSE THE DOGS OF WAR: DIONYSIOS SKYLOSOPHOS
There is a section in the walls of the castle of Ioannina that locals always approach with conflicted feelings of awe and horror. For in a now fenced-off cave within the living rock, the Bishop of...
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ARACHNE, NIOBE AND THE DARK SECRETS OF THE DIVINE SISTERHOOD
“Is praising enough? I also need to be praised in turn. No mortal shall scoff at my power unpunished.” Athena, Ovid’s Metamorphoses. I’ve always harboured a good deal of sympathy for Scylla, the...
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THE RETURN OF THE EVZONES
From the outset one thing must be made abundantly clear: anyone visiting from the motherland should be welcomed with open arms by our community and treated to our famous Greek-Melburnian hospitality,...
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PRE-EASTER WITH GEORGE
George is a second generation Thessalian and enjoys a respected position working within the realm of finance while also dabbling in the arcane world of computer programming on the side. We meet once a...
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ANZAC DISMAY
When I was young, Anzac Day barely rated a blip on the radar of my community consciousness. I was lucky enough to attend a private school but even there we received no instruction as to the importance...
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BLACK CRETANS
“The Cretans are vastly picturesque: great number of blacks, male and female.” Edward Lear 1846 According to the British consul in Chania, Crete, writing in 1858 about British efforts to stamp out...
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THE FORGOTTEN GENOCIDE: THE STARVATION OF THE MARONITES
“My people and your people, my Syrian Brother, are dead ... What can be Done for those who are dying? Our Lamentations will not satisfy their Hunger, and our tears will not quench Their thirst; what...
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SOUMELA AND THE MAGIC KEMENCHE
One wintry Sunday afternoon, as we in Melbourne were enmeshed in the throes of the 2020 lockdown, my eldest daughter came to me and said: «Μπαμπά, όλο γράφεις και γράφεις αλλά ποτέ δεν γράφεις τίποτε...
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ON THE PASSING OF A PRIEST: FATHER PANAYIOTIS STYLIANOPOULOS
As far back as I can remember, every year on my nameday, which also happens to be my birthday, at exactly the same time, I would receive a telephone call from my parish priest Father Panayiotis,...
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