ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
An elderly Greek-Australian has spoken to The Advocate today regarding the horror that’s set to befall his community in the coming years.
“Is over,” said local man Adamantios Androutsopoulos.
The 76-year-old has been living in our town’s light industrial Betoota Ponds area since emigrating to Australia as a teenager. He worked in the Allawah bauxite mine for 40 years and is now retired and living on the Old Age Pension, made possible after transferring all of his assets into his children’s names.
Speaking to our reporter in Machattie Park on the boundary between the Ponds and the French Quarter, he said things are changing too quickly.
“I see a woman with her children in the bucket of the bike. What is wrong with a car? Is beginning of end. No more kafenios soon. Soon, they will be bakeries. Somewhere for the yuppie to get a sweet before work,” he said.
Mr Androutsopoulos then let out an earth-shattering cough and cursed his filterless Camel.
“My friend Yannis died and they bought his house and smashed it to the ground. They put up a glass tent. A home for a wanker. Designed by a fat architect, who dressed all in black, we would see him come and his tummy would bulge over his belt like a Turks would. I would rather have more Turkish in Betoota Ponds than these bike children people with their little dogs and double parking,”
“Death is coming for me and the Ponds. It came for Yannis, his widow Elenie now millionaire and moved to Sunshine Coast. She drives a BMW now. I remember what the Germans did, my father told me about what the Germans did in Greece during the war [spits] I will never drive one [coughs] Look at my Fairlane. The Marrickville Mercedes. Best car,”
“I see what happened to the French Quarter. Once, people like me. Then heroin. Then wankers. Then rich wankers. But who cares, I will be dead. They can turn my house into some cheap house made from wood and plasterboard.”
More to come.
