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Athanasia Thliveris, 2023
Speaker Profile Προφίλ ηχείου
Despina Tsakalides
Interview date: 2 Jun 2025 | | Language: Greek
Athanasia Thliveris, 2023

Speaker background

Occupation: Factory worker, shop ownerYear of arrival: 1962Method of transport: Ship (Patris)

Despina was born into a Pontian family in a village near Kavala in northern Greece. Limited employment opportunities forced Despina to consider emigrating, which she did in 1962. She was betrothed to Kleanthis, a young man who was well known to the family. Despina and Kleanthis were married within a month of her arrival in Sydney. Having worked in many jobs, the couple built and ran Clem’s Chicken Shop in Newtown, which became a local institution.

Place of birthKechrokampos, Eastern Macedonia and Thrace
Location in AustraliaPunchbowl

Interview summary

Despina describes life in the village, which was populated by Pontian families, as well as families originally from Asia Minor and Eastern Thrace. She reflects on her varied working life, which includes the creation of a very successful chicken shop in Newtown. A recurring topic is Despina’s Pontian background and the traumatic exodus of her family from their homeland in north-eastern Turkey. During the interview Despina is assisted by her daughter Barbara. Also present during the interview is Barbara’s husband, Arthur Panos.

Interview highlights

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Despina describes a fellow lodger in Surry Hills who gleaned food to save money.

Despina: We had a Peloponnesian with us who was such a miser. Such a miser! He’d go to the market as they were closing and he’d gather the leaves of vegetables and he’d make fricasse, which was meant to last him a whole week. He’d also buy a kilo of mince from which he made keftedes [meatballs]. […] He worked as a cleaner. He’d always find matches, lollies. He would gather things like that. Really, anything he could find in the rooms he cleaned. They [his family] lived upstairs and we were downstairs. He would wait for me to cook and light the stove, and he’d arrive just before I switched the stove off. He did not use up any matches!

Timecode 23:23 - 24:29
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Despina explains how Clem’s Chicken Shop was established in the early 1980s, prior to the gentrification of Newtown.

Her husband, Kleanthis, who was known in English as ‘Clem,’ was advised against selling clothes and to sell food instead. A relative from America gave Kleanthis a secret spice recipe that gave their chickens a distinctive flavour.

We found Kosmidis [the owner of the building]. He gave us a lease. We created the business. We built it. It took about a year to start because we didn’t have a lot of money to do things [quickly]. And that is how we started with chickens. For this type of business, Kleanthis had a lot of help from people he knew, who had worked with Kentucky [Fried Chicken]. […] We had an aunt from America, who came here to see us. […] She had a very big [chicken] business, and she said, ‘I will give you the [spice] recipe. My children have it, but they do not share it with anyone else. […] We will share the recipe with you Kleanthis,’ because Kleanthis was a very good man. They gave it to Kleanthis. ‘But you must never share it,’ they said to him.

Timecode 34:16 - 35:33

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