THE GREEK AUSTRALIAN The oldest circulating Greek newspaper outside Greece email: VEMA [email protected] JANUARY 2007 Tel. (02) 9559 7022 Fax: (02) 9559 7033 In this issue... Our Primate’s View WHEN ‘PLUSES’ BECOME ‘MINUSES’ (Professor Joseph Ratzinger, as Pope Benedict XVI) PAGES 5/23 - 6/24 Housing affordability FEATURE The ageless spirit of Hellenism at record low PAGE 19/37 Dreams of buying a home are even fur- ther out of reach for many first-time buy- ers because of rising interest rates and higher prices, Australia's peak building body says. Last year's three interest rate rises, coupled with an ongoing shortage of housing stock, has sent affordability to a record low, the Housing Industry Association (HIA) said. And for the first time in history, Perth hous- ing for first-time buyers is now less afford- able than Sydney. HIA is calling on federal and state govern- ments to take action over the housing crisis. Releasing its quarterly Housing Affordabi- lity Index, HIA's executive director of hous- ing and economics, Simon Tennent, said it had become patently obvious that the cor- rection in housing markets and improve- Greece in row with ment in affordability predicted two years ago was way off the mark. FYROM over "The combination of rising prices over the monwealth Bank Housing Affordability home buyer income, up 1.7 percentage quarter and the triple whammy of higher Index for first-time buyers fell 5.5 per cent, points on the September quarter. Alexander the Great interest rates has pushed housing out of its fourth consecutive decline, and was 15.5 The median first-home price, based on reach for an increasing number of house- per cent lower than a year earlier. loans financed by Commonwealth Bank, is PAGE 2/20 holds who are also facing sharp increases in The index at 97.9 is now below 100 for the $376,000 in the December quarter, up from private rents," Mr Tennent said. first time since the measure commenced 22 $361,500 in the previous quarter. "The case for a rethink on housing afford- years ago. Affordability fell in all metropolitan areas, ability and a targeted all-of-government The monthly loan repayment needed on a and all regional areas, except for regional approach to address the problem has never typical first-home mortgage rose to $2,332 Victoria due to a fall in house prices there. been more compelling," he said. from $2,194, an increase of 6.3 per cent, and The December quarter 2006 HIA/ Com- now accounts for 30.7 per cent of total first AAP Riddle of Homer’s Odyssey island may have been solved PAGE 15/33 ‘Let My Prayer Be uro Funeral Service Set Forth in Thy Eëëçíéêü Ïéêïãåíåéáêü Ãñáöåßï Ôåëåôþí Sight as the Incense’ Tel: (02) 9747 6604 8 PAGE /26 Available 24 hrs 114543 JANUARY 2007 2/20 TO BHMA The Greek Australian VEMA Smashed ancient statues offer clues to Greek desert island By Nicholas Paphitis Unlike its larger, postcard-perfect Aegean Sea neighbours, Keros is a tiny rocky dump inhabited by a single goatherd. But the barren islet was of major importance to the mysterious Cycladic people, a sophisticated pre-Greek civilisation with no writ- ten language that flourished 4,500 years ago and produced strikingly modern-looking artwork. A few kilometres from the bustling resorts of Mykonos and Santorini, Keros is a vast repository of art from the seafaring culture whose flat-faced marble statues inspired the work of 20th century masters Pablo Picasso and Henry Moore. Out of all the documented statues - known as Cycladic figurines - in museums and collections worldwide, more than half were found there. The Cycladic culture - a network of small, sometimes fortified 30 JANUARY, 1948 New excavations by a Greek-British team of archaeologists have farming and fishing settlements that traded with mainland Greece, Gandhi assassinated unearthed a cache of prized prehistoric statues - all deliberately bro- Crete and Asia Minor - is best known for its elegant figurines: most- ken - that could help finally solve the Keros riddle. ly naked, elongated figures with their arms folded under their chest. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the When they were unearthed, the white marble shards were jumbled The civilisation flourished between 3200 and 2000 BC and was political and spiritual leader of the Indian close together like a pile of bleached bones - an elbow here, a leg eclipsed in the second millennium BC by Crete and Mycenaean independence movement, is assassinated there, occasionally a head. Greece. in New Delhi by a Hindu fanatic. British excavation leader Colin Renfrew now believes Keros was A group of broken figurines like that found this year is known from Born the son of an Indian official in 1869, a hugely important religious site where the smashed artwork was cer- private collections formed after the looting. But for the first time now, Gandhi's Vaishnava mother was deeply emoniously deposited. experts can try to piece a story together from the subtle clues that religious and early on exposed her son to “What we do have clearly is what must be recognised as the earli- treasure hunters destroy. Jainism, a morally rigorous Indian reli- est regional ritual centre in the Aegean,” he said. The excavation disproves theories that the artefacts came from gion that advocated nonviolence. Gandhi This could put it on a par with the sacred islet of Delos - also in the cemeteries - as no human bones were found - or were wantonly bro- was an unremarkable student but in 1888 Cyclades - revered from early antiquity until Christian times as the ken by modern vandals. was given an opportunity to study law in birthplace of Apollo, god of music and light. Only the finds on Keros “We can say that the breakages are definitely old,” Renfrew said. England. In 1891, he returned to India, date to about 1,500 years before the cult of Apollo started on Delos. “(The figurines) weren’t smashed there because (then) you’d find the but failing to find regular legal work he There is no evidence that the Cycladic culture worshipped the bits together, and there’s differential weathering which suggests that accepted in 1893 a one-year contract in Greek gods of Mount Olympus - who first appeared in the 2nd mil- not only were they broken elsewhere and brought there, but some of South Africa. lennium BC - and their beliefs are shrouded in mystery as no sanctu- them became weathered elsewhere.” aries dating to before 2000 BC have been excavated. Renfrew believes the figurines - some originally up to a metre high JANUARY 20, 1981 However, some experts believe that the islanders’ religion was - may have come from regional sanctuaries spread throughout the Iran Hostage Crisis ends probably built round a fertility cult related to the mother-goddess of Cyclades. And pottery finds indicate that the site could have attract- neolithic times, whose worship survived in various forms until ed worshippers from as far away as mainland Greece. Minutes after Ronald Reagan's inauguration Christian times in the Greco-Roman world. The Cycladic statues - “Maybe at some point in some life cycle, the figurines were ritual- as the 40th president of the United States, the many of which depict pregnant women - may have played a part in ly smashed and taken to Keros in some ceremony,” he said. “It’s 52 U.S. captives held at the U.S. embassy in such beliefs, and their deliberate destruction would have been a ritu- going to take a while to sort out what’s going on.” Teheran, Iran, are released, ending the 444- al act. Experts agree that the elegant marble figurines, which initially had day Iran Hostage Crisis. During excavations in the spring and early summer last year, details painted on in bright colours, were highly prized in the early Renfrew’s team found an undisturbed trove of figurines missed by bronze age Cyclades, but still don’t understand for what purpose they JANUARY 25, 1905 looters who ransacked the islet in the 1950s and ‘60s. They all had were made. Some 1,400 have survived, although only 40 per cent are World's largest diamond found been deliberately smashed around 2500 BC. of known origin as looters destroyed evidence on the rest. “We’ve got hundreds of marble bowl fragments and many dozens The figurines were made following a pattern that changed little over On January 25, 1905, at the Premier Mine in of figurine fragments, which don’t seem to fit together,” said 800 years. They have been variously interpreted as depicting gods or Pretoria, South Africa, a 3,106-carat dia- Renfrew, an emeritus professor of archaeology at Cambridge venerated ancestors, serving as replacements for human sacrifice, mond is discovered during a routine inspec- University and former director of the McDonald Institute for grave goods - even children’s toys. tion by the mine's superintendent. Weighing Archaeological Research. While Renfrew believes they should not be associated with the 1.33 pounds, and christened the "Cullinan," “You have a head here, a single foot here, a torso there, some thighs cemeteries in which many were found, he concedes there is little evi- it was the largest diamond ever found. here - and all very deliberately broken. Pieces have been deliberate- dence of how they were used in everyday life. ly broken again into small pieces.” AP FEBRUARY 10, 1996 Kasparov loses chess game to computer Greece in row with FYROM over Alexander the Great On this day in 1996, after three hours, world chess champion Gary Kasparov Greece reacted angrily to a decision by Greek culture across the entire known loses the first game of a six-game match the Former Yugoslav Republic of world,” Bakoyannis added.