Transcript of the LANDLINE programme. A Night at the Roxy

A report of the 75th Anniversary celebration weekend, for the Roxy "complex", Bingara. 9th & 10th April, 2011.

Broadcast: 8th May 2011

Reporter: Pip Courtney

ANNE KRUGER, PRESENTER: If you're of a certain age then the words "Greek" and "cafe" will bring back a host of memories. Remember sliding into the booth for a milkshake, ordering a mixed grill and a milky coffee? Or maybe it was an ice cream sundae after going to the pictures. There was a time when most country towns had at least one Greek cafe. Open all hours, seven days a week, they were known for their generous serves and competitive prices.

Sadly, few of the original cafes remain. But the New South Wales country town of Bingara is proud to announce that its Greek cafe, the Roxy, has been reborn. To celebrate, the proud town threw a party, the biggest since the Roxy first opened 75 years ago.

PIP COURTNEY, REPORTER: In its 75 years, the Roxy's been a cafe, a memorabilia shop and a Chinese restaurant. But no role's more memorable than that of Greek cafe which it played between 1936 and 1965.

JOHN WEARNE, FORMER MAYOR, BINGARA: People would come into town and they'd have lunch at one of the Greek cafes, then they'd send their kids to the matinee to see Tom Mix or Gene Audrey in the afternoon, and then they'd go back and have dinner in one of the Greek cafes - they would have called it tea in those days, I think - and then they would have gone to the movie.

PIP COURTNEY: In the middle decades of the last century, Greek cafes were a feature on a lot of main streets throughout Australia.

TONI RISSON, AUTHOR, 'APHRODITE & THE MIXED GRILL': Some towns had 10 of them, even quite small towns, and these were the social hubs of the communities, it's where you spent your time, it's where you met your friends. Really, they were the McDonald's of their time. They were all through Sydney, Brisbane, we had lots in Brisbane, but they've all gone, long gone.

PIP COURTNEY: What was on the menu? Was it Greek food?

TONI RISSON: OK, definitely not Greek food. They - the Greek proprietors were very good at finding out what Australians wanted. They gave them lots of it, very cheap, any hour of the day or night.

CON FARDOULY, FORMER GREEK CAFE OWNER: Ham and eggs, steak and eggs, fish and chips - the three basic things.

PIP COURTNEY: And what were the opening hours?

CON FARDOULY: Opening hours - they were open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Most of them had staff or they lived above or at the back of the premises, and everybody knew, didn't matter what time they came to town, if they knocked on the door, they'd be served, yeah. Because the fires never went out, I don't think.

PIP COURTNEY: It's been 46 years since the Roxy's kitchens plated up anything off the Greek menu.

It was a one-off breakfast service to celebrate the launch of the refurbished cafe.

The Roxy had closed its doors in 1965 and was turned into a memorabilia shop. In the late '80s, the kitchens fired up again, Chinese style. It was a far cry from the Art Deco gem that first opened for business in 1936.

Then the cafe and the Roxy Theatre next door were the grand dream of three Greek migrants.

SANDY MCNAUGHTON, GWYDIR SHIRE COUNCIL: Unfortunately for the partners, their involvement in the Roxy complex was short-lived and they actually filed for bankruptcy within a few months of the Roxy opening.

JOHN WEARNE: It is just mind-boggling, the investment they made. In a year probably just after the depression, I've heard 300,000 pounds mentioned. Now if it was now that would equate to many millions of dollars in today's figures.

But one thing we do know is when it comes to an overcapitalisation, that's got to be right up there among the biggest I've ever seen. To build something like this, a complex like this in a small town, which already had an existing cinema and two other Greek cafes to go in competition with was out of all proportion to the size of the place. And it was just our absolute luck that they did it.

PETER PRINEAS, GRANDSON OF ROXY FOUNDER: Even though they failed, they built something lasting. You've got to remember that stories of failure are bread and butter to Australians. I mean, what else do they like? I mean, look at Burke and Wills, look at Ned Kelly, look at Gallipoli, and now we've got another one, a beaut story. Not only have we have got a good Australian failure, but we've got a Greek tragedy as well.

PIP COURTNEY: The Roxy was built by Emmanuel Aroni, George Saltis and Peter Ferris, Peter Prineas' grandfather.

PETER PRINEAS: My grandfather was a careful man. And if it'd been only up to him, I don't think the buildings would've been built, to tell you the truth. Or if they had been built, they wouldn't have been so grand. Because, you know, he would've been more careful with the expenditure. It possibly was magnificent folly in spending so much, but we got the benefit of it now, so let's not worry too much about that.

PIP COURTNEY: In 2008, the local council bought the cafe, planning to restore and show it off. But not on its own. You see, next door was the Roxy Theatre. After being empty for 40 years, it had been restored to its full art deco glory.

Council figured together, the theatre and the cafe would make a great cultural and tourism double act.

Federal, state and local governments contributed $1.2 million to the theatre's restoration.

BOB CARR, FORMER NSW PREMIER: If you lift a heritage building like this and find what we call adaptive reuse, then you send some lifeblood through the whole community. And that's happened here, it's happened here. It's been a boost to the community, it's mobilised the community, it's brought people into the town and it's held people here who might otherwise have drifted away.

PIP COURTNEY: The theatre reopened in 2004.

JOHN WEARNE: It's probably regenerated this community economically, culturally, locally. In just about every way that you can imagine, this community's gone forward as a result of it ... the community uses it for everything. They have dinners, they have dances, they have weddings. They even have funeral services occasionally. The school uses it widely.

PIP COURTNEY: What about for artistic endeavours like the theatre, like a cinema. Is it still used for that too?

JOHN WEARNE: Oh, yeah. We get some excellent performing art shows here. John Wood, who everybody knows as ... from Blue Heelers has almost adopted this place as his own. If we've got an arts patron, it would be John Wood.

JOHN WOOD, ACTOR: It's such a beautiful building, and, like, the interior is just - you know, it's one of the best interiors in the country. And it's actually a really nice theatre to play.

PIP COURTNEY: It's hoped the cafe's faithful restoration will build on the theatre's success.

JOHN WEARNE: I'm absolutely over the moon. The cafe will give us another dimension. We'll actually improve significantly the operating potential of the theatre.

SANDY MCNAUGHTON, GWYDIR SHIRE COUNCIL: So it will be very much a homecoming, if you like. It's coming back to something that was just so familiar that is no longer just on anybody's doorstep. So in terms of tourism, I think it'll have a huge impact.

PIP COURTNEY: The million-dollar renovation of the cafe has taken several years.

SANDY MCNAUGHTON: It was incredibly exciting when we did pull up the carpet to reveal the original terrazzo floor, and equally exciting when we started stripping the paint across the front of the facade to find the original etched glass, which is incredibly rare.

PIP COURTNEY: The wooden booths were long gone, ripped out and dumped.

SANDY MCNAUGHTON: The gentleman who owned the cafe and lived here had the foresight when he sold it to the Chinese restaurant proprietor, who didn't want any of this panelling or cubicles, to go and store it in his shed instead of it going on the tip.

PIP COURTNEY: The neon sign was found in a paddock, where it had been for 40 years.

SANDY MCNAUGHTON: The grandchildren of one of the original founders of the Roxy have paid for the restoration of the sign. The glass has again been hand-blown by a master craftsman, and it just looks absolutely amazing.

PIP COURTNEY: When word got out what was happening, memorabilia started arriving.

JOHN FEROS, CAFE KID: There's a wonderful glass backlit sign which shows the prices from our dad's cafe called the Treasury Cafe which ran in the '50s and '60s in Brisbane. It lay underneath our house for a long time until my brother Harry discovered it.

PIP COURTNEY: Not all of the Roxy's original interiors and restaurant-wear could be found. But Sandy McNaughton uncovered the next best thing: the chattels of a Greek cafe in Inverell that closed in 2000.

SANDY MCNAUGHTON: We were able to purchase all of this tables and chairs and the counters and the fridges and the shelving, which because it was exactly the same era, just fitted in so beautifully into our restoration.

PIP COURTNEY: Con Fardouly ran the Inverell cafe.

CON FARDOULY: It's lovely to see it again because a lot of them have disappeared. And this'll be lovely icon to come back and just refresh memory, what it looked like. But I don't want the work involved with (inaudible).

PIP COURTNEY: To let the world know the Roxy renovation was done, council planned the biggest celebration the town had seen in 75 years when the Roxy opened.

There to smash a few plates and reflect on the impact of Greek immigration was Bob Carr.

BOB CARR: For some reason, the Greek migration to Australia stands out as one of the happiest migration stories of all time, and it's told very largely through the cafes and the cinemas that penniless Greeks ended up establishing. It's a very interesting strand of the great Australian story.

PIP COURTNEY: Greek migration was driven by poverty, and curiously, Greeks from the small island of Kythira dominated the cafe culture here.

CON FARDOULY: They were forced to because they were absolutely starving. And the country was so poor and the people, to survive, had to look further than their little islands.

TONI RISSON: They saw places like America and Australia as a land of opportunity and so they came to make their fortunes, mostly intending to go home then when they - you know, sort of rich as kings and go back, but after they lived in Australian communities for 20 years, there was no going back.

PIP COURTNEY: Why did they move into cafes?

CON FARDOULY: Well, you didn't have to be skilled to feed people. And if there's one thing a Greek knows, it's how to appreciate food and how to be hospitable.

PIP COURTNEY: Bingara's main street was transformed for the celebration. The number of Greeks in the crowd, including former cafe owners and the kids of cafe owners showed just how important the Roxy's restoration is to the Greeks.

JOHN WEARNE: The partnership being forged with the Greek community, particularly descendants from Kythira, will raise the Roxy to new dimensions and years to come it will serve as a memorial to the massive contribution that Greek people have made to the development of rural and regional Australia and continue to make.

PIP COURTNEY: John Wearne believes Bingara will become a Mecca for the Greek community.

After the big reveal it was time for a walk down memory lane milkshake.

VOX POP: I think it's wonderful and it's more wonderful because my husband just made me a chocolate milkshake with double ice cream and malt and I haven't had one for 34 years.

VOX POP II: I love the cafe. I love it. It's very authentic. My father had a cafe very, very similar to this one. And we had a theatre very similar to this one. But our theatre burnt down and they were lucky they kept this one.

VOX POP III: Well I think it makes Bingara a bit special and a bit different to other towns, and I think that's pretty important. Every town's got to have its own identity.

VOX POP: I grew up in a country town. The cafe on a Friday afternoon was where we went as a treat. So, yeah, this brings back great memories, it's fantastic.

PIP COURTNEY: The Roxy weekend drew hundreds of people to town. The theatre was packed with people watching newsreels and old movies. In the crowd was Tony Risson, the author of a book on Greek cafes. She's delighted the Roxy's got people talking.

TONI RISSON: I think we're only just really at the beginning now of understanding about things like Greek cafes and how important they've been. And the more - I hope the more that people understand, the more they'll keep cafes like the Niagara in Gundagai, the Paragon in Katoomba, they'll go to those places and patronise them because otherwise we'll lose the ones that we have.

PIP COURTNEY: She says while the Roxy was welcomed back, sadly, Queensland's wild January weather destroyed two Greek cafes - one in Tully and one in Chinchilla.

There are two more phases to the Roxy's restoration. First, the cafe needs an operator; and then, there's the massive space upstairs.

(Pip venture's upstairs with Roxy Theatre and Museum Manager, Sandy McNaughton).

SANDY McNAUGHTON: We're going to open it up to the community, so this'll be used by members of the general public for conferences. It will also be available for meetings as well as being an educational and research facility for school groups.

PIP COURTNEY: Now you've got rooms up here. What are you going to use them for?

SANDY McNAUGHTON: We've got three rooms at the front of the cafe that will be dedicated to our museum.

And as you can see, at the moment it's pretty much a blank canvas.

PIP COURTNEY: What do you want in here?

SANDY McNAUGHTON: What we want to see in the next phase is to engage a museum professional and they're going to be charged with the very enviable task of fitting out the museum. And what we're hoping is that anybody who's had an association with Greek cafes and they have retained something, whether it be advertising material, crockery or cutlery or glassware or anything, that they would like to see that that can actually go on display and be held at The Roxy for generations to come so that the story of the Greek cafe can be told for generations to come.

PIP COURTNEY: When the cafe's kitchen's cooking up a storm and the museum's filled, the Roxy might just become a tourist icon all over again. That's the dream, anyway.