Melbourne’s Greek community has flooded Campaspe Shire with thousands of dollars in donations to help the region’s worst affected families after the waters have receded.
A bus load (and several cars) from Melbourne arrived at Opa on Sunday to turn on a Greek spectacular as part of it fundraising campaign — which included a Greek play written with an Echuca flavour, Greek Christmas carols and enough Greek food to feed an army.
Plus a cheque for more than $13,000 raised in Melbourne and with the generous support of Gary Byford from Byford Equipment in Moama – with the promise of more to come from its famous Antipodes Festival, to be held in Melbourne next February.
Greek Community Melbourne president Bill Papastergiadis told the packed High St restaurant the community officially formed in 1897 with about 200 Greek migrants living in Victoria at the time.
The most recent census has more than 160,000 Greek speaking residents in Melbourne and another 10,000 across regional Victoria.
“Melbourne is now about the seventh largest Greek city in the world,” Mr Papastergiadis said.
“But we are also Victorians, and when we started to hear about the damage to towns in this region, we all wanted to help.
“Liaising with Echuca’s Kathy Kostoglou and her husband Con, she was able to explain to us the true extent of the floods, especially in towns such as Rochester, where all but a few homes went under, and in Echuca with that huge levee bank built right through the town.
“The community effort up here has been incredible, and even if we only end up helping a few people it will be a job worth doing.”
The Kostoglous run the Amcal and Priceline pharmacies in Echuca and have been championing the recovery to friends and family and Melbourne, which is how, she says, this financial support package started.
But now Kathy and Co have pulled the community together as well, with the State Member for Murray Plains Peter Walsh, Campaspe Shire Mayor Rob Amos and Murray River Council Mayor Chris Bilkey, throwing their weight behind the campaign.
Joined by businesses such as Maria and Nick Raftellis’ Opa, Richard and Kerry Acquisto’s Billabong Ranch (which also turned its horse and carriage over to the children of the Melbourne families for the morning), TwistED Science, which also opened its doors for free to the visitors, Thanasi and Stav Gkintidis from Top of the Town fish and chips along with the team of cookers and servers, including Nick and Sophie Cotsoglou, Matthew, Irene, Jake, Romeo and David Constantini, Mozes Cotsoglou, Maria and Chris Mitropolous, Maria and Helen Dandakis, and Bill Glentzes and Gabby Frawley.
“After we started speaking to members of Melbourne’s Greek community a story was run in the Greek newspaper there, and on the Greek radio station and things just took off,” Ms Kostoglou said.
“Now we are planning more fundraising up here as well as the amazing invitation for us to get involved with the Antipodes Festival, which pulls round 150,000 people – and every dollar we raise goes totally to the recovery projects in our region.”
“Initially it will almost certainly be as cash vouchers, through Rochester Community House, which has been working closely with all those displaced families and businesses down there.”
Ms Kostoglou said a highlight from Sunday — along with the cheque handover — was the performances by students and staff from the Greek schools, which were established by members of the Greek community.
“What the community has done in having the vision to come up with a Greek solution to rescue the Greek language and culture is nothing short of amazing,” she said.
“The Greek Language and Culture Schools of the Greek Community of Melbourne had more than 1200 students in 2022 and were set up to keep Greek culture and language alive following the Greek diaspora, mostly after World War II.
“As well as modern Greek, and creative drama and the arts, students or one-off participants also have the option of sitting down to study ancient Greek.”
