Greek-Australian senator Nick Xenophon continues to be in the political foreground, as the campaign for the elections of September 7 peaks.

This time Xenophon and the Victorian Democratic Labor Senator John Madigan paid $ 5,366 each in order to buy an Australian dinner set for the Parliament House.

“I was surprised to be informed that the Parliament House uses dinnerware from abroad. The nation’s Parliament not using Australian crockery is a complete crock,” Senator Xenophon said.

The two leading political figures of Australia donated 120 dining sets consisting of a dinner plate, side plate, soup bowl, teacup, saucer and oval platter plus 30 extra side plates.

The Greek Press in Australia has completed a century of life. The first Greek newspaper that was released 100 years ago is still available under a different name and monthly circulation.

The first Greek newspaper of Australia was named Australis and its publisher, author and typographer was Stratis Venlis, 31, born in Egypt, of parents from Mytilene.

Venlis arrived in West Australia in 1904 and stayed there for eight years, when in 1912 he moved to Melbourne, where he released his newspaper in 1913, inaugurating in that way the Greek-speaking press in the Fifth Continent.

The printing house that Venlis founded was pioneering and important for the Greek community, with typography elements that he possibly brought from Egypt. In the printing house in question, where he conducted various typography works from the beginning, the first Greek book, the great “I Zoi en Australia”(Life in Australia), was documented in 1916.

Venlis’ newspaper was initially published in small shape and had four pages. Later, the newspaper’s publishing continued with 80 and 100 papers in circulation, which was a real challenge. However, Australis lasted. The newspaper survived  World War I by making its publications rarer and right after it moved to Sydney in hope of  better luck since more Greeks lived there.

Objective difficulties remained until finally,Venlis was forced to sell the newspaper to the priest D. Marinakis, vicar of the Sydney Community. The newspaper was renamed Ethniko Vima, changed three or four owners and is currently known as Vima tis Ekklisias owned by the Archdiocese of Australia.

The second Greek newspaper that was published in Australia was named Oceanis that circulated in 1914. The publisher was George Nikolaidis, of Cypriot descent, who migrated to Australia through Egypt in 1913.

Oceanis was the first Greek newspaper of South Australia circulating throughout the continent, even in New Zealand.

It is estimated that within the 100 years of history of the Greek Press in Australia, a number of nearly 110 Greek newspapers have been released.

During the last years the number of newspapers of the Greek Diaspora is shrinking and less than six circulate one or more times per week.

According to the Age, Loukia Bariamis, the key witness in a multi-million dollar fraud case against Steve Iliopoulos, a man with links to the Comancheros outlaw motorcycle gang, has allegedly been threatened by his ex-wife in the Supreme Court.

Bariamis was sitting in the dock on Monday after Justice Kevin Bell had briefly left the bench when Emma Iliopoulos, who had been seated behind her in the courtroom, allegedly told her twice, “I’m going to get you, no matter what.” Iliopoulos then left the courtroom and then she was stopped by the police.

Defense barrister David Grace, QC, asked that Iliopoulos be banned from returning to the courtroom and Justice Bell agreed. Iliopoulos was then allowed to leave the court building.

Bariamis, 52, a mother of two who has pleaded guilty to three charges of obtaining financial advantage by deception involving $33.55 million from the Commonwealth Bank when she was the failed Viking Group’s chief financial officer, had earlier been in tears when Mr Grace revealed she had been threatened in prison.

Mr Grace told the court the threats made to Bariamis in the maximum security Dame Phyllis Frost Centre women’s prison were now being investigated by prison authorities and police. The threats, including one as recently as Sunday, had the potential to cause deterioration in Bariamis’s mental health knowing the danger she was in.

Mr Grace said that previous hearings held in the Melbourne Magistrates Court had been told there were concerns that  Iliopoulos could interfere with witnesses in the case.

Iliopoulos had connections with the Comancheros outlaw motorcycle gang, Mr Grace said. He said Iliopoulos and the Comancheros had allegedly been involved in concealing Viking’s assets to the company’s liquidator and other authorities.

Bariamis, who is being held in protective custody, was jailed for four years in June over a separate matter where she claimed more than $1.8 million in fake refunds from the Tax Office and then gambled most of it away.

Crown prosecutor Susan Borg had earlier told the court Bariamis was part of the executive management team at Viking, a major trucking and transport company which collapsed in 2011. Other members of the team included Steve Iliopoulos, who was the chief executive, his son, Peter, and Bariamis’ husband, Bill.

Bariamis had produced fraudulent documentation which the Commonwealth Bank relied on to loan Viking more than $52 million in 2010. When the fraud was exposed, the Commonwealth Bank lost a total of $48 million but the amount  Bariamis was directly involved in was $33.55 million.

Iliopoulos and his son, Peter, have been charged over the alleged multi-million dollar fraud.

Australian acknowledged actor Vince Colosimo, is facing bankruptcy proceedings after being sued by a Greek law firm in Melbourne.

As the Age reports, the 46-year-old star has been dragged into the Federal Court for a $36,000 demand from the Oakleigh-based firm of Dandanis & Associates.

Colosimo has appeared in about 30 movies and has been acting on stage and on television  the past three decades.

He is currently filming Fat Tony & Co, a spin off from the Underbelly series which  focuses on the manhunt for convicted drug boss Tony Mokbel after he fled Melbourne for Greece aboard a $320,000 yacht.

According to the Age, Colosino had been also driven to the Victorian Supreme Court in 2008, when he battled his former partner Jane Hall after the end of their 11-year relationship, with Colosimo asking a 90% share of the sale of their $890,000 home in Northcote.

However, Dandanis & Associates issued Colosimo a bankruptcy notice on May 22, 2013.

A hearing has now been scheduled for October 1 in the Federal Court.

Turkey speaks of “forgery of history” and characterizes the testimonies of Australians who fought at Gallipoli as” lies.” Australians reacted strongly to these allegations.

The parliament of New South Wales is in a head-on collision with the Turkish government after its decision to recognize the genocide of Greeks, Armenians and Assyrians by the Ottoman Empire.

The Turkish government with the Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu threatened the Australian politicians who distort history “that they are not allowed to attend events for the one hundredth anniversary of Gallipoli which will be held in 2015.”

In Gallipoli, a hundred years ago, thousands of Australians and New Zealanders were massacred by the forces of Ataturk when they attempted to disembark in the Dardanelles as part of the allied forces. Major events at Gallipoli with the participation of tens of thousands of Australians are scheduled to take place in 2015.

The Australian Immigration Minister, Chris Bowen, has repeated that Australia is ready to sign the agreement on granting visas to young people from 18 to 30 years old for vacation and work.

The Greek Deputy Foreign Minister Akis Gerontopoulos in an interview to the daily broadcast of the Greek State Radio and Television of Australia SBS, said that Greece is ready to sign the agreement.

Bowen informed the President of the Greek Community of Melbourne Vasilis Papastergiadis that the file is in Athens. The two politicians met on August 23.  The meeting was attended by the Professor of the University of Melbourne, Nikos Papastergiadis.

According to Nikos Papastergiadis, the Australian minister was impressed by the cultural activity of the Greek Community with scholars of Australia and from abroad.

The Head of the Community, Vasilis Papastergiadis told the minister that in order for the Greek Cultural Center to be developed, it should be staffed properly and its members should be paid with Federal government grants.

The minister agreed and said that after the elections he will work on these issues with the Community.

Kostas Sklavos, a Diaspora Greek, who heads the powerful lobby of Pharmacists of Australia, has launched a Pan-Australian campaign, aiming to reverse the federal government’s decision to reduce the subsidy of prescription-written medication.

With this measure the government estimates that the public sector will collect $ 835 million in four years. However, the measure meets the dynamic reaction of pharmacists in the country who have launched a national campaign protest.

A few days ago approximately 450 pharmacists, all members of the Association of Pharmacists in Australia (Pharmacy Guild of Australia), gathered in Perth, where they presented thousands of signatures asking Canberra to revise the original decision and not cut down on drug subsidies.

Sklavos is the National Chairman of the Pharmacy Guild of Australia who said that the government pronouncements on August 2, were made without consultation and will have a negative impact on the operation and sustainability of pharmacies in the country. As highlighted in the gathering in Perth, hundreds of thousands of signatures have already been collected and the aim is to collect 16 million signatures in total.

The cost of entry permits in Australia has hit record high. The cost of granting a visa has increased by 75% in the budget presented by the Greek government in May, and from September a further increase of 15% is also expected.

This is a 4-5-7 type visa, that is granted to skilled immigrants and is worth $ 1,035, something that has obviously caused the reaction of both immigrants and employers, who argue that the cost of a visa actually prevents them from bringing qualified personnel from abroad.

“When I first set foot on Greece- FYI that was my very first trip outside Australia- I fell in love with it. I don’t know exactly what it was, but I just loved this country. Back then I was 20 years old, now I’m over my 50’s, but Greece is always my destination.”

That’s how a former journalist from the Sydney Sun-Herald, Marjory McGinn, described her relationship with Greece.

Three years ago, she, along with her husband Jim Bruce, also a journalist, and their dog Wallace, left Scotland to embark on an adventure in the wild and beautiful southern Peloponnese in crisis-stricken Greece.

The couple settled in a hillside village in the Mani, where the local residents shared their lives,  laughter and stories. Marjory decided to write a book, recently published, about their humorous and insightful journey through one of the last unspoiled regions of Greece entitled Things Can Only Get Feta.

The book is full of encounters with warmhearted Greeks who said are proof Greece still has its heroes, if not euros. “We wanted to live like Greeks, in the province, far from the British people. Besides, I’ve always had in mind to write a book for Greece which I did.”

John Howard’s former economic adviser, Senator Arthur Sinodinos, has been promoted into the finance portfolio by opposition leader Tony Abbott, through the creation of a trade and investment super-ministry, in a dramatic restructure of his economic team should the coalition win the election.

As The Australian reports, Abbott and his deputy, Julie Bishop, have found a way to transfer her trade responsibilities to Andrew Robb to create a senior frontbench position aiming to strengthen the “economic and commercial” opportunities for Australia.

In this framework, Sinodios, who is Shadow Parliamentary Secretary, will be promoted into the top role of Finance Minister in order to enhance the coalition’s economic credentials and political influence.

The new position is a retort to Kevin Rudd’s claim that the mining boom is over and the new minister’s priority is to attract $150 billion of investment in new resource projects over the next few years.

Robb’s new portfolio and the promotion of Sinodinos implies that Abbott will have to take some difficult decisions and to drop some members of his team, the paper reported. His team consists of 32 ministers, but if they win the elections Abbott will not be able to appoint more than 30 to form the government.

The Body Beautiful in Ancient Greece exhibition will be shown at  Bendigo Art Gallery in Victoria, north of Melbourne.

The exhibition concerns the collection of selection of key art works from the British Museum’s Greek and Roman collection and will be officially shown in the second half of 2014.

Victorian Premier Denis Napthine said the exhibition  is a fantastic and unique opportunity not only for Bendigo but the whole of Victoria and Australia.

Bendigo Art Gallery director Karen Quinlan said concerning the Greek artworks that are a wonderful overview of what was happening 2000 years ago in the eyes of a Greek mind.

The government says that the next year’s exhibition is intended to be a huge success concerning people’s attendance.

Another important distinction was once again given to the expat pianist, composer and conductor Stefan Cassomenos, who was runner-up in the 2013 Lev Vlassenko Pan-Australian Piano Competition, held in Brisbane, performing compositions of Russian composers.

Some 68 pianists took part in the final phase of the competition. Along with the prestigious award, 28-year-old Stefan received  a $ 10,000 check as well.

The Greek-Australian pianist has had numerous appearances in concerts and competitions, being given numerous awards worldwide. He gives regular solo recitals throughout Australia, and has appeared as a soloist throughout Europe and Asia.

He began performing internationally at the age of 10 and premiered his own first piano concerto with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra at 16 years old. His 2007 London performance was reviewed as “a prodigious London debut by a formidable talent.” He was recently a grand finalist in the 2012 Rhodes International Piano Competition.

Cassomenos’ compositions have been performed by the Symphony Orchestras of Melbourne and Adelaide, and his third piano concerto was premiered in 2010 at the Melbourne Recital Centre. He was recently awarded the 2012 Young Achievement Award by the Hellenic Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

The famous Cirque du Soleil has begun a world tour presenting a performance-tribute to Michael Jackson. In September and October, the event will be staged in Australia’s biggest cities after it completes a tour of China, South Korea and Japan.

Among the artists participating in the performance in question is the Cypriot Liko Kosmidis, who pointed out that he is experiencing “the dream of his life.”

Kosmidis has collaborated as choreographer with Greek singers such as Despina Vandi and Kostas Martakis in Athens. He has also participated in the Greek reality TV shows So You Think You Can Dance and Greece’s Got Talent.

He has lived in Melbourne and chased his dream in Los Angeles, where he was finally chosen, among thousands of dancers, to participate in the performance Michael Jackson the Immortal World Tour.

Cirque du Soleil and the Estate of Michael Jackson will present the performance in question in the Australian cities Perth (Sept. 18-22), Sydney (Sept. 26-29), Brisbane (Oct. 2-6), Melbourne (Oct. 9-13) and Adelaide (Oct. 15-17).

On August 28  Greek-Australian John Xypolitos, 57, of Hughesdale, was found guilty  of murdering his companion’s son17-year-old Gary Adams.

Xypolitos murdered the 17-year-old with a hammer, then dismembered his body with a hacksaw and dumped pieces at tips across Melbourne in plastic bags.

After Xypolitos killed the boy, he left his body in the padlocked shed of their house and began preparing the evening meal for his partner as if nothing had happened.

The murder took place in 2003, but Xypolitos was arrested in 2012.

Prosecutor Andrew Tinney SC told Xypolitos’ Victorian Supreme Court trial he was guilty of a crime of “extraordinary coldness and calculation.”

“With the use of a hacksaw he turned a human being into a large number of sections of flesh and bone,” Tinney told the jury.

Xypolitos had pleaded not guilty to murdering Gary on December 5, 2003, claiming he killed the 17-year-old in self-defense: “Gary attacked me with a screwdriver,” he claimed.

But he confessed to killing the teenager to an undercover police officer in early 2012, as the court was told.

Xypolitos will face a plea hearing on Aug. 29.

Members of the Board of Directors of the Greek Orthodox Community of Melbourne & Victoria met with the Federal Minister for Immigration Tony Burke on August 23 and discussed matters concerning the Community and the Greek Diaspora.

The federal MP Maria Vamvakinou, the President of the Community Vasilis Papastergiadis, the member of the Board of Directors Giorgos Koletsis and the co-chair of the Advisory Committee of the Greek Cultural Center and Professor of the University of Melbourne Nikos Papastergiadis, attended the meeting.

Burke stated that he is impressed by the activities and work of the Community, while he pointed out that the Australian government is ready to sign the interstate agreement with Greece that will allow Greek visitors to work during their holidays in Australia (Work and Holiday Visa).

He congratulated the Community for the actions and efforts it makes in order to promote the Greek language and Greek civilization in Australia. He stated that he is particularly impressed by the innovations, the leading role and the modernization of the Community and especially with the creation of the Greek Cultural Center, pointing out that he will continue the collaboration with the successful function of it.

On the part of the Community, it was stressed that the function of a modern Cultural Center in the heart of Melbourne is an important step of progress for the Greek Community, a great contribution to the wider Australian multicultural total and a new point of reference for the Greek Diaspora.

“The Cultural Center will create a strong relation with Greece, with a primary role in the field of the Greek Diaspora worldwide,” Papastergiadis pointed out, adding that it will be connected with the current Greek centers in the USA and Europe. “Hellenism is a rich think-tank and a prospect for life that continues influencing and forming our modern way of thinking. The Cultural Center will derive from this story an attractive platform in a wide range of modern artists and intellectuals.”

A photograph exhibition on the Greek crisis by the distinguished photographer Efi Alexaki will be hosted at the Gallery of the Macquarie University in Australia until September 7.

Alexaki visited Greece and took many photos illustrating the Greek crisis, through the artist’s eye. She recorded the crisis the way people experience and express it with slogans on walls, garage doors, signs and statues in every corner of Athens.

The exhibition, as Alexaki told Neos Kosmos, is the combination of two experiences; her personal shock when she saw Greece ‘wounded’ by the crisis’ slap and the collective shock that the Greek community is experiencing because of it.

On August 28, 184 years were completed since the day the first Greeks demonstrably set foot on Australia. Those first Greeks were seven sailors from the Greek island of Hydra, who were accused and convicted of piracy against a  British ship.

According to other information, Greeks had arrived in Australia before the seven convicts, but this has not been proved with data.

Hugh Gilchrist, who has been Ambassador of Australia in Greece for several years, has thoroughly researched the case of arrivals, even forced ones, of those Greeks in Australia as well as the history of  Greek migration to the continent in general; after working methodically for decades on this matter, he gave stirring and revealing aspects of the issue.

According to Gilchrist, in July 1827, during the struggle of Greeks against the Ottomans, in the Libyan Sea, the ship Hercules from Hydra, with a nine-member crew, stopped the English ship Alceste, which was heading to Alexandria, and removed part of its cargo.

Near the Greek island of Crete, Hercules was chased by another English ship, was captured and led to Malta, which was under British sovereignty at the time. The crew was referred to court, the president of which was the known Admiral Codrington.

During the trial, the Greek sailors claimed they had attacked Alceste, because it was transporting supplies for the Turks, who were their enemies. Seven of the crew members were sentenced to death and the other two were found not guilty. Intense backroom processes to challenge the trial’s outcome and intervention by Kountouriotis in London followed and the death sentences were converted into penalties of exile.

The Greek convicts, Giorgos Vasilakis, Gikas Voulgaris, Georgios Laritsos, Antonis Manolis, Damianos Ninis, Nikolaos Papandreas and Konstantinos Strompolis arrived in Sydney, Australia, on 28 August 1829. After diplomatic and other governmental actions, five of them found favor in 1834 and returned to Greece, except for Gikas Voulgaris and Antonis Manolis who remained in Australia as free settlers.

Manolis’ grave can be still seen in New South Wales in Picton village, around 100 km southwest of Sydney.
Antonis Manolis spent two-thirds of his life there and rests in peace in the Upper Picton Cemetery since 1880.

Manolis married an Irish woman and remained in New South Wales. Since then and until his death in 1880, Manolis was a  farmer in Picton and one of the first to cultivate the land in that area.

Some ingenious Greeks always have their way, such as fisherman-poet Christos Raskatos who is going to participate in the Festival of Performing Arts of Lorne, a seaside town on Louttit Bay in Victoria, Australia.

At the Festival of Performing Arts of Lorne, from Sept. 6 to 8, Raskatos will present the performance Oysters and Oratory with Christos.

The success of his performance is more than certain as Christos is well-known both as a fisherman and as a poet. He writes and recites in two languages (Greek and English).

There in the platform of Lorne, where Christos sells his fish, there is always a blackboard where he writes his poems with chalk.

The Australian newspaper wrote an entire tribute to Raskatos as it is feared local authorities will pull down his fishmonger “for something better for the tourists to be built.”

And maybe the last poem that Christos will write on the board of his shop, which was opened back in 1969, will be a “requiem.”

The Greek Cultural Center in Melbourne, Australia, which is under construction, will be granted the amount of 455,000 dollars for the following three years by the federal government, if the coalition between the Liberal and the National Party wins the election of September 7.

This is the commitment that the federal Liberal senator Arthur Sinodinos, who may be Australia’s next Minister of Finance, has undertaken.

After a meeting Sinodinos had with the Greek Community’s president, Vasilis Papastergiadis and treasurer, Nikos Parthimos, he stated to Neos Kosmos that “the Cultural Center, a building of 15 floors in the heart of Melbourne that is under construction at the moment, will be the ornament of Australia’s Hellenism and should be an example for the communities of Hellenism all around the country.”

Sinodinos, who was chief of staff to the then Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, said that the Liberal Party is impressed by the Cultural Center that is under construction, as well as by the Greek Community’s action concerning the cultural sector.

“For this reason, if we are elected, we will fund with the amount of 455,000 for three years the hiring of a curator of the Cultural Center and of a person that will classify the archives of Australia’s Hellenism. We believe that the Center in question will be of a worldwide level.”

Papastergiadis, informing Sinodinos, said that the Community is developing great action in all domains.

Sinodinos said that Melbourne’s Community is a representative body and it will be the pleasure of a future Liberal government to collaborate with it.

It is reminded that for the construction of the Cultural Center, the Labor government offered 2 million dollars with the consent of the opposition.

The hospice Bear Cottage at Manly provides refuge for very sick children and their families from across NSW and the ACT.

A fundraiser to benefit Bear Cottage at Manly, the only children’s hospice in NSW will take place at the St Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church Hall in Sydney on October 27th at 2 p.m. The event is organized by the Stelios Prapas family.

Bear Cottage is a very special place that’s dedicated to caring for children with life-limiting conditions and their families.

Planning began for Bear Cottage almost 20 years ago, when Dr John Yu and Dr Michael Stevens from The Children’s Hospital at Westmead decided to enhance the hospital’s palliative care program.

Located on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, in Manly, Bear Cottage is like a home away from home – as far removed from a hospital environment as possible. Here staff do not wear uniforms, no medical procedures are carried out in the bedrooms, the children’s rooms are designed to like a normal bedroom, and we even have a family pet, Frankie, our adorable Labrador. That said, Bear Cottage is set up to provide excellence in paediatric medical care 24 hours a day, and our affiliation to The Children’s Hospital at Westmead means we have access to some of the best medical resources in the world.

The facility was established entirely through community support, at a cost of $10 million, and was officially opened on St Patrick’s Day, 17 March 2001,

Bear Cottage does not receive any recurrent government funding and so continues to rely on donated funds and community support to raise over $2.9 million required to operate each year.

See more info about the event below: