Генеральный консул Греции в Южной Австралии анонсировала переезд в новый офис и расширение культурных связей с Аделаидой

Alexandra Theodoropoulou, the Consul General for Greece in South Australia, was a little distracted, surrounded by boxes — “cartons,” she said — for a move to new premises. The current Grenfell Street office is poky and hidden, especially for someone with Theodoropoulou’s aspirations for Greeks and Adelaide. A little superstision The Consul won’t say where they’re moving to — she’s “a little superstitious” and “there have been delays.” “It is an upgrade and I’ve been looking for two years. And we are going to an excellent location, able to service the Greek population of South Australia.” Greece, she added, “is helping me more and it shows because, you know, we are changing venue, enhancing approach and services.” “There’s been real understanding from the governments of Greece. And we are trying to be as efficient as possible, to respond to the practical needs of the South Australian Greek community.” Theodoropoulou points to a “new, simplified digital service” and expanded services more broadly. “Greece’s digital approach is excellent; people can now go online and get a lot of information.” Things are changing in other ways too — there are now more women than men serving as Greek consuls in Australia, with Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide all represented by women. “This time we are more women than men, and this reflects the new realities of Greece,” Theodoropoulou says. The Athens of the South Theodoropoulou’s project is to lock down a sister-city relationship between Adelaide and Athens. In colonial times Adelaide was touted as the “Athens of the South” — Colonel Light’s vision of a city with a Mediterranean climate, built by free settlers and free ideas. Regardless of the far larger Greek population in Melbourne, Theodoropoulou says she’s fortunate to have an active Greek South Australian community behind her. Smaller than Melbourne’s, Adelaide’s Greek community is well embedded in mainstream power. “I am fortunate to have such a Greek community in South Australia,” she says. “The Athens of the South — well, let me tell you, when I came here, it was one of the first things I was told by the Greek community.” She recalls being told this by Greeks in “top positions” and reels off names: Theo Maras, business archon and former president of the Greek Community, who she says, “has been an excellent support”; federal MP Steve Georganas, “a loyal advocate for the community”; former Supreme Court of South Australia judge Christopher Kourakis AC, and of course, the powerhouse SA Treasurer Tom Koutsantonis. “All the parliamentarians, when they invited me to the South Australian Parliament, spoke to me of the idea of ‘Adelaide as the Athens of the South,'” Theodoropoulou says. “They wish to make this happen through a sister-city relationship. There have been connections and discussions since 2020, and since I got here I have been pursuing it with rigour.” Lobbying in Greece Theodoropoulou was in Greece recently, lobbying Athens council and mayor Haris Doukas on the merits of the idea. Melbourne already has a sister-city relationship with Thessaloniki, and while it might seem incongruous given Athens’s status as national capital, “Adelaide as the Athens of the South” has loomed large in the city’s psyche since settlement — a city that imagined itself a cultural, creative, intellectual hub for free settlers. The free city, like Athens. The first electorate in the world to give women equal voting rights with men, in 1895. The first to decriminalise male homosexuality, in 1975. The first to end the six o’clock swill and liberalise licensing laws, in 1967. Its festivals, wineries and beachfronts all made for the pitch — until the economic downturn that began in the late 1970s took hold, and by the mid-1990s, after a brain-drain to Melbourne and Sydney, Adelaide had become a stock joke for stand-up comedians on the eastern seaboard. Things changed. Adelaide has grown, people came back, others came in. Good economic management, new entrepreneurial energy, better planning, and vast mineral resources at a moment when rare minerals and copper are what oil once was, all coalesce to make Adelaide reach for that nascent ideal: maybe it can be the Athens of the South. Not unlike Athens itself, which one writer in 2014 called the “Mogadishu of the Med” amid economic collapse, and which has since re-emerged as a powerhouse of culture, food and digital economy. Good reason, then, for a rekindling of the idea — and a possible relationship. Adelaide, the Consul says, “is back on the map.” A string of high-profile visits has sharpened Greek government awareness of the city: Deputy Minister Loverdos — Greece’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, responsible for Hellenes Abroad and Diaspora Affairs — and a Ministry of Defence delegation attended a Battle of Crete commemoration. These visits signal real interest from Athens. A poet’s cultural ambitions That rehabilitated profile feeds her cultural ambitions. Theodoropoulou is an accomplished poet with two collections in Greek under the pen name Alexandra Kandanou, A Thousand in One Nights (2014) and The Feather Bridle of Love (2017), and with Athens enjoying a major post-crisis creative boom, she wants more Greek content woven into Adelaide’s arts calendar, the Adelaide Festival and Writers’ Week. Funding is always an issue. Touring productions are expensive, Australia is far, and convincing Greece to underwrite them is hard going. A shared-cost model, add-ons on tours through Asia, government and community support, she says — is the likely solution, and the ambition needn’t mean importing a full theatre troupe. “Even one or two artists, brought over for something like a classical theatre workshop, would make a meaningful contribution.” Theodoropoulou says she was “telling the Athenians about the advantages of a relationship. Of course, I had the support of the Greek community here and Adelaide’s Lord Mayor, Dr Jane Lomax-Smith.” Athens has not been sister city with any other Australian city, she notes, “so the other cities can be envious of us,” she laughs. “The Greek community here has been amazing, and I truly believe both cities have to gain from a relationship.” The Consul says an Athens–Adelaide relationship could “invigorate the classics and Greek language education in Adelaide, through exchanges,” alongside creative and arts exchange between the Adelaide Festival and Greece, and even “environmentally sustainable technologies and ideas.” “It’s good also for business, for tourism, for interaction between Athens and Adelaide.” Fighting for Greek studies “Students from Australia going to Athens, it’s a good thing, and education is where I have given most of my energies,” she says. She expresses regret and concern over Australian institutions abandoning Greek studies, as Flinders University is about to. “A difficult chapter,” she calls it euphemistically. “I know that Melbourne is struggling as well,” given the challenges Greek studies face across a short-sighted tertiary sector. Theodoropoulou is laser-focused on sustaining Greek language teaching “to save the continuity of the teaching of the Greek language, primary to tertiary.” She recently secured a $30,000 Greek government grant for the University of Adelaide, ahead of “a very important meeting with the Vice-Chancellor” on enhancing Greek studies together with a Hellenic foundation. She also obtained a $30,000 grant for Charles Darwin University in the Northern Territory. It’s a lot for one office still living out of boxes but for Theodoropoulou, moving premises and moving mountains seem to be much the same job.