Australian
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Teacher’s notes

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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.