Peter Sklavos Cafe in 2004.

In another entry about the Monterey Cafe in Gilgandra, I revealed that "...I was born in Gilgandra, in 1952, and left after completing my schooling in 1969.

From about the end of WWII, until mid-1975 - Gilgandra, population, 2,900 - was a very Kytherian town.

5 families - the Pentes, Sklavos, Kelly ((Yiannakellis), Psaltis (Protopsaltis), and Poulos (Tzortzopoulos) - lived in close proximity to each other - culturally, residentially, and commercially.

In the main, Kytherians embraced Kytherians - Gilgandra embraced Kytherians - and Kytherians embraced Gilgandra".

During the middle of the year 2004, I took my father, now 88 years old, on a nostalgia tour, back to Gilgandra, and through other towns in the Central and North West of New South Wales.

Not a single person of Kytherian origin now lives in Gilgandra. And only one family of Greek origin lives there.

I found of course, all the buildings, where the Kytherians had conducted their businesses; but all of these - with the exception of the Gilgandra Fruit Shop (my father's old shop), had substantially changed their usage.

Peter Pentes adopted his parachoukli Sklavos as a surname. He ran a typical Greek cafe from the premises in this photograph. The business ceased when the family decided to move to the Gold Coast in Queensland in search of more educational and occupational opportunities for the 6 children, the eldest of whom where then completing their schooling.

There was never an Asian restaurant in Gilgandra from the end of WWII, until the opening of this Chinese restaurant in the 1990's. It is yet another sign of cultural change, one group of immigrants move on to other pursuits - the next wave begin another cycle of what Gilchrist calls "the shop-keeping phenomenon".

One of my motivations in submitting these entries about the Gilgandra shops today is to try and encourage original Gilgandra family members to submit photographs of the shops in their heyday - from yesteryear.

For those who know Gilgandra well, Barry Nangle was still running the Furniture One Store, in mid 2004 - (depicted on the left)