Copyright (0000) George C Poulos

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.

The Kytherian presence in Gilgandra began in 1910, with the Baveas family establishing the ABC Cafe in the town.

A comprehensive history of the Kytherian presence in Gilgandra

From about the end of WWII, until mid-1975 - Gilgandra, population, 2,900 - became 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.

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.

I also found a series of what I came to call living memorials to the Kytherians who had lived, worked, and died in the town.

These were the olive trees that almost invariably every Kytherian family planted.

Elsewhere I have also spoken about the olive-ization of Australia. This is part of that same phenomenon.

Olive-ization. Hot off the press

Olive-ization of Australia. Swan Valley, Western Australia

Jack Pentes, who ran a store on the intersection of the main street, opposite the Royal Hotel, and lived one street further back, had planted a number of olive trees.

I have outlined the history of Jack's trees in another submission.

Olive trees. Living Memorials to Jack Pentes

The trees on the footpath outside this house in Morris Street, Gilgandra, were planted by Yarni Logothetis, from Logothetyianika, Kythera.

His son, Harry, and daughter-in-law Voula, had purchased the Gilgandra Fruit Shop from their "buzunaki" and brother-in-law Con George Poulos in the early 1970's.

For a few years he came to Australia, and lived in the house with the Logus family.

In a sense you could say that the 2 olive trees are a living memorial to Yarni Logothetis.

But the Kytherian presence in the house depicted in this photograph runs much longer and much deeper than this,

For more that 2 decades the Sklavos family, headed by Peter and Theothora, lived in the house. They left in 1968, moving to the Gold Coast, Queensland.

The house was then occupied, (to the best of my memory) by the Aird-Kelly (daughter of Paul and Chris Kelly, of ABC Cafe fame) family, for a few years, before being sold to the Logus family.

The olive trees then, become not only a living memorial to Yarni Logothetis, but also to the Sklavos, Aird-Kelly, and Logus families as well.

To conclude in the same vein as the submission on Jack Pentes -

...in these olive trees, which could live for thousands of years, we have a living memorial to Yarni Logothetis, the Sklavos, Aird-Kelly, and Logus family - and their "Kytherian presence" - in the town of Gilgandra, NSW