Australian
Screen

an NFSA website

The Food Lovers’ Guide to Australia – Series 5 Episode 3 (2004)

play
Email a link to this page
To:
CC:
Subject:
Body:
clip The taverna in the desert education content clip 1, 2, 3

Original classification rating: G. This clip chosen to be G

Clip description

It’s the opening night of one of Australia’s most isolated restaurants. We’re at the new premises of the Greek Taverna owned by Anastasios and Maria Kiossos, known locally as Tom and Mary. And it’s a Greek restaurant to cross the desert for, as Maeve discovers when she arrives in Coober Pedy.

Curator’s notes

The Food Lovers’ Guide to Australia is an example of lifestyle television programming which has grown rapidly in Australia in the last decade, often due to the low production costs but also because they are very popular.

This clip shows SBS reporter Maeve O’Mara with Anastasios and Maria Kiossos, or Tom and Mary as they are known locally, in the kitchen of their Greek restaurant in Coober Pedy, South Australia. As expected the footage focuses on the preparation of food which is presented lovingly to the viewer.

An unexpected addition is footage of a road train roaring along a desert road bringing ingredients to the restaurant. It hits home the incongruity of a Greek taverna located almost in the centre of Australia. This clip is a fine example of the contribution that migrants have made to Australia, so while it is a food show, it is also in praise of multiculturalism.

Teacher’s notes

provided by The Le@rning FederationEducation Services Australia

This clip shows Anastasios and Maria Kiossos, or Tom and Mary as they are known locally, in the kitchen of their Greek restaurant in Coober Pedy, an opal-mining town in outback South Australia. SBS reporter Maeve O’Mara samples Tom’s tzatziki and Mary’s galaktoboureko, a popular Greek sweet. Maeve talks to their son Paul while he prepares the restaurant’s signature dish of saganaki prawns. The clip ends with footage of celebrations at the opening of Tom and Mary’s new Greek Taverna – one of Australia’s most isolated restaurants.

Educational value points

  • Greeks have been coming to Australia to live since the 1820s. They arrived first as convicts, then sailors, then refugees from Ottoman rule, and more arrived during the gold rushes in the mid-19th century. It is estimated that by 1900 Australia was home to about 1,000 Greek migrants. Assisted migration was introduced in 1947, and between 1947 and 1952, many Greeks emigrated to Australia in search of a better life; the family reunion scheme brought many more after 1952. Today, Melbourne is said to be home to more people of Greek heritage than any other city apart from Athens.
  • Greeks have had a strong influence on Australia’s food, particularly its seafood, hospitality and restaurant industries. Greek cuisine is based on readily available local ingredients and, as is the case with all cuisines, the climate and the terrain originally determined what people ate. Olive oil is a main ingredient in Greek food and there have been olive trees in Greece for thousands of years. Seafood is popular in the coastal regions and the islands, while sheep and goats provide meat and milk for cheeses such as fetta and kasseri. The clip shows Tom growing herbs, but all other ingredients need to be freighted into Coober Pedy.
  • Coober Pedy is one of the most ethnically diverse towns in Australia. It is estimated that there are 45–50 nationalities represented in its population of approximately 3,500 people. As well as the Antakarinja people who originated in the Pitjanjatjara and Yankuntjatjara lands north-west of Coober Pedy, the predominant nationalities of Coober Pedy are Greek, Italian, Serbian, Filipino and German. Other nationalities represented are Swedish, Swiss, English, Columbian, American, Czech, Chinese, Albanian, Chilean and Iranian, to name just a few.
  • Coober Pedy is an opal-mining town in SA, 850 km north of Adelaide and 680 km south of Alice Springs. It was originally known as the Stuart Range Opal Field, named after the explorer John McDouall Stuart (1815–66). In 1915 opals were discovered by a teenager, Willie Hutchinson, after whom the main street of Coober Pedy is now named. In the same year the town was renamed Coober Pedy, an anglicised version of kupa piti, which means 'white man in a hole’ in the local Arabana language, because the European opal miners lived underground where it was cooler in summer and warmer in winter.
  • To prepare their Greek dishes, the Kiossos family rely on the ingredients being transported by road train into Coober Pedy. A road train is a large diesel-powered prime mover, or huge truck, that is coupled with one or more long trailers. There are refrigerated units that transport food, while sheep and cattle are transported in multidecked vans.
  • The Food Lovers’ Guide to Australia is an example of a food, travel and lifestyle television program. The 'lifestyle’ genre, which has grown rapidly since 2000, covers such subjects as health, cooking, travel, gardening and renovation. The programs are cheaper to produce than drama, which explains their popularity with Australian television networks. The long-running Burke’s Backyard (1987–2004) was the pioneer of this style of show in Australia.
  • SBS reporter Maeve O’Mara was copresenter of The Food Lovers’ Guide to Australia and has been a presenter on Better Homes and Gardens. She now organises what she calls 'gourmet safaris’ – food tours in Australia and overseas.

Thanks to the generosity of the rights holders, we are able to offer The taverna in the desert from the television program The Food Lovers' Guide to Australia – Series 5 Episode 3 as a high quality video download.

To play the downloadable video, you need QuickTime 7.0, VLC, or similar.

You must read and agree to the following terms and conditions before downloading the clip:

australianscreen is produced by the National Film and Sound Archive. By using the website you agree to comply with the terms and conditions described elsewhere on this site. The NFSA may amend the 'Conditions of Use’ from time to time without notice.

All materials on the site, including but not limited to text, video clips, audio clips, designs, logos, illustrations and still images, are protected by the Copyright Laws of Australia and international conventions.

When you access australianscreen you agree that:

  • You may retrieve materials for information only.
  • You may download materials for your personal use or for non-commercial educational purposes, but you must not publish them elsewhere or redistribute clips in any way.
  • You may embed the clip for non-commercial educational purposes including for use on a school intranet site or a school resource catalogue.
  • The National Film and Sound Archive’s permission must be sought to amend any information in the materials, unless otherwise stated in notices throughout the Site.

All other rights reserved.

ANY UNAUTHORISED USE OF MATERIAL ON THIS SITE MAY RESULT IN CIVIL AND CRIMINAL LIABILITY.

This clip is available in the following configurations:

File nameSizeQualitySuitability
foods5e31_pr.mp4 Large: 22.1MB High Optimised for full-screen display on a fast computer.
foods5e31_bb.mp4 Medium: 10.4MB Medium Can be displayed full screen. Also suitable for video iPods.

Right-click on the links above to download video files to your computer.

Thanks to the generosity of the rights holders, we are able to offer this clip in an embeddable format for personal or non-commercial educational use in full form on your own website or your own blog.

You must read and agree to the following terms and conditions before embedding the clip:

australianscreen is produced by the National Film and Sound Archive. By using the website you agree to comply with the terms and conditions described elsewhere on this site. The NFSA may amend the 'Conditions of Use’ from time to time without notice.

All materials on the site, including but not limited to text, video clips, audio clips, designs, logos, illustrations and still images, are protected by the Copyright Laws of Australia and international conventions.

When you access australianscreen you agree that:

  • You may retrieve materials for information only.
  • You may download materials for your personal use or for non-commercial educational purposes, but you must not publish them elsewhere or redistribute clips in any way.
  • You may embed the clip for non-commercial educational purposes including for use on a school intranet site or a school resource catalogue.
  • The National Film and Sound Archive’s permission must be sought to amend any information in the materials, unless otherwise stated in notices throughout the Site.

All other rights reserved.

ANY UNAUTHORISED USE OF MATERIAL ON THIS SITE MAY RESULT IN CIVIL AND CRIMINAL LIABILITY.

Copy and paste the following code into your own web page to embed this clip: