Ariell Friedman, an engineering PhD student co-supervised by Professor Stefan Williams and Dr. Oscar Pizarro at the University’s Australian Centre for Field Robotics, won the prize for documenting excavations in Pavlopetri in 3-D.

To do so, the marine robotics team worked on location at Pavlopetri, the oldest known submerged city, which lies off the coast of Greece’s southern Laconia region. There, up to four meters of water covers artifacts and structures dating back 5000 years.

Friedman’s work not only involved operating a diver rig, but also modifying and improving the diver camera system and developing software to allow the rapid production of maps by automating the data processing pipeline.

The Extreme Imaging competition is run by Canon Australia and CiSRA, Canon’s Australian research center, and aims to promote and acknowledge local research at the intersection of imaging and technology.

(Source:http://www.vision-systems.com)

Slipper, along with Australia’s Senate President John Hogg, extended an official invitation to House President Yiannakis Omirou and a parliamentary delegation to visit the country, and met with them yesterday, Wednesday, in the capital Canberra.

Australia, and indeed, Cyprus, would be very keen to see negotiations proceed, so that Cyprus once again could be entirely unified and that the authority of the Republic of Cyprus government could be recognized properly throughout the island, Slipper said when speaking to Cypriot media.

On the continuous colonization of the Turkish-occupied part of the island by settlers, the Speaker of the Australian House said that there is a real worry that some hundreds of thousands of Turkish citizens have been moved onto Cyprus.

He further noted that Australia recognizes the government of the Republic of Cyprus as the sole legitimate authority for the entire island, adding that he wished Cyprus well on assuming the Presidency of the European Council in the second half of 2012.

(Source: CNA)

The initiative has already raised more than $70,000 and aims at reaching $100,000 by its completion tomorrow, according to Neos Kosmos.

President of GOCNA John Nicolakis told Neos Kosmos daily that the initiative was unanimously decided on by the members of the Greek Community after he told them of the current situation in the Greek Island.

With the Greek debt crisis further plaguing the people of the country, the fundraiser will enable the Kalymnian Archdiocese to continue its food programme providing humanitarian aid during these harsh times.

People have responded very positively to the call of the Community and have contributed to the fundraising effort with whatever they could.

During the night all former presidents, committee members, ladies auxiliaries, youth committees, dance groups, soccer committees and soccer teams will be awarded certificates for their participation.

The Pancretan Association of Melbourne – Australia was created from the unification of the two historical organisations from Melbourne. Namely the Rethimnian Association of Melbourne – Australia “ARKADI”, established in 1972, and the Pancretan Brotherhood of Melbourne & Victoria established in 1977.

The aims and objectives of both Associations since their inception almost 40 years ago were to unite under one umbrella the Hellenes of Cretan descent that had arrived as migrants, and to assist them in their settlement period as such. Furthermore they wished to promote, educate and enhance the 2nd and subsequent Generations of Cretan values, ideals and traditions by organising educational, philanthropic, recreational, social and cultural activities.

Special guest musicians during the event will be Sifis Tsourdalakis, Manolis Kaklis and Stelios Papadakis. For tickets please call Aggie Mihelakis on 0439 324 445 or Manuel Starakis on 0411 455 183.

The Day will commence with a Church Service by the Rev. Father Eleftherios Tsatsis followed by a Day full of Fun, Food and Drinks, Good Music and great “parea” (company).

The Association Committee will have a sumptuous lamb and a pig on the spit for everyone attending.

John Pollakis and his Band will entertain all picnic goers that will make the trek down the Mornington Highway. In case of bad weather or rain, the picnic will still go ahead, due to the undercover facilities available at the Monastery.

For any enquiries please call Manuel Leontakis on 0425821599.

(Source: http://www.pancretan.com.au)

Omirou, heading an inter-party delegation of the Cyprus House of Representatives, while on an official visit to Australia, addressed this evening (local time) members of the Cypriot and Greek communities of Melbourne.

Omirou also praised the members of the community for their contribution in the effort to restitute the fundamental freedoms and human rights of the Cypriot people, adding that they are a valuable part of the wider Greek Cypriot community.

Speaking on developments concerning the Cyprus issue, Omirou said Turkey’s intransigent stance was intensifying, a fact which, he noted, also became obvious during the last meeting at Greentree, New York, between Cyprus President, the UN Secretary-General and the Turkish Cypriot leader.

Omirou said that Ankara has yet to fulfill its obligations towards Cyprus, by recognizing the Republic of Cyprus, permitting Cypriot vessels and aircrafts to use the Turkish waters and airspace, and by working towards a Cyprus solution, based on EU principles.

Moreover, he noted Turkey’s “provocative stance” vis-a-vis the upcoming Cyprus’ Presidency of the European Council during the second half of 2012. EU partners should send a message to Ankara, making clear that this cannot be tolerated, Omirou said.

He added that the Cyprus EU Presidency is a major challenge for the Republic, and noted that the state, the Parliament and the civil society are all working towards this aim.

Having all lights turned on Cyprus during the six-month Presidency term will also help raise awareness on the Turkish occupation of part of the country, Omirou went on.

Concerning the recent discovery of hydrocarbon resources in Cyprus’ Exclusive Economic Zone, Omirou said it was turning the odds in favor of Cyprus, adding to the island’s geostrategic importance, with possible positive repercussions for a Cyprus solution.

While responding to questions by members of Melbourne’s Cypriot Community, the House President noted that all parliamentary parties in Cyprus were struggling for attaining unity in the domestic front, and for reaching consensus, to the extend possible, as regards the Cyprus problem.

On the recent criticism towards Alexander Downer, the UN SG Special Advisor on Cyprus and an Australian native, Omirou clarified that the issue should not be confused with Australia’s continuous support to the Republic of Cyprus, based on the UN Charter, Security Council resolutions and European law.

Downer recently came under severe criticism for saying that the Greek Cypriots instead of the Republic of Cyprus – a fully-fledged EU member since 2004 – will hold the six monthly rotating presidency of the EU Council, in the second half of 2012. Downer has since rectified his remarks.

The House of Representatives recently passed a resolution, stressing its grave concern and disappointment over the unacceptable statements and actions of the Special Advisor, following the Greentree meeting last January, and noted that Downer had compromised the credibility and impartiality required by his role.

Omirou said that Downer, in his capacity as a UN top envoy in Cyprus, was not representing the Australian government. The House resolution, he went on, was aiming to send a message to the UN Secretary-General to address the issue.

Omirou and the House delegation ware welcomed by a crowd of Melbourne’s and Victoria’s Cypriot and Greek communities, in the presence of High Commissioner of the Republic Yiannis Iacovou, Australian MP Maria Vamvakinou and others.

Earlier, the President of the House and the delegation visited the “Grace of Mary” elderly hostel, in Epping and met with Cypriots from Melbourne’s northern suburbs. In commemorating the House delegation visit, Omirou planted an olive tree in the charitable establishment’s forecourt.
(source: cna)

Yiannakis Omirou

Developments in the ongoing effort to find a negotiated settlement that would reunite Cyprus will be the focus of parliamentary delegation discussions in Australia this coming week.

“During our official visit, we shall brief our interlocutors on developments in the Cyprus issue, in the light of increasing Turkish intransigence, and seek their support in our effort to achieve a viable, functional and democratic settlement, on the basis of international and European law,” House President Yiannakis Omirou has said regarding his visit to Australia.

Replying to questions, Omirou said he expects their meetings to be “productive and fruitful”.

Omirou, heading a six member delegation, will pay an official visit to Australia, from February 6 to 12, at the invitation of the President of the Australian Senate John Hogg and the Speaker of the House of Representatives Peter Slipper.

The delegation will visit Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney and have a series of contacts with political personalities on a federal and state level.

The members of the Cypriot delegation will meet Shadow Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, the Governor of New South Wales Marie Bashir, the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of Victoria, Ken Smith, and the President of the Legislative Council of Victoria, Bruce Atkinson.

In Canberra they will meet the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade of the Australian Parliament and lunch with the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of New South Wales, Shelley Hancock, the President of the Legislative Council, Don Harwin, and members of the Australia-Cyprus Friendship Group.

The delegation will also meet members of the Cypriot community of Australia, in Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney, as well as Archbishop of Australia Stylianos.
(source: cna)

“This microchip is one step towards the driver of our high-acuity retinal implant, which aims to restore a sense of vision for people with retinitis pigmentosa and age-related macular degeneration”, Skafidas stated.

Researchers have completed probe testing of the high-acuity chip with encouraging results, and further testing underway. The team will now work towards delivering a version of the chip with 1000 electrodes and wireless transfer of data and power. This microchip could then proceed to preclinical testing.

The aim of this research is to develop technology that will provide enough visual detail for patients to be able to recognise faces and read large print.

“Our design also shows that the manufacturability of our device is a very real possibility. The substantial progress we have made in this regard is due to our strong working relationship with IBM, which has manufactured our chip,” Professor Skafidas added.

Professor Efstratios (Stan) Skafidas received his Doctoral Degree in Electrical Engineering in 1997 at the University of Melbourne, Australia.

In July 2004 he joined NICTA as program leader of sensor networks at the Victorian Research Laboratory. Professor Skafidas is now Research Group Manager – Embedded Systems. He is a member of the IEEE 802.11/802.15 standard committees for Wireless Local and Personal Area networks.

His research interests include RF CMOS, Antennas and Propagation, Wireless Communications and Implantable devices.

The woman, who now lives in Greece, claims Age journalist Carolyn Webb falsified an interview with her that led to a Greek court handing her a two-year suspended jail sentence for criminal defamation in 2009, according to ‘Herald Sun’.

According to the woman suing them, they have refused to provide evidence to the Greek courts that would substantiate the purported interview they published.

Mr. Theophanous was charged and subsequently cleared of the offence. But the allegations ruined his political career, causing him to resign from the cabinet before quitting Parliament.

The woman is seeking $20 million in damages, claiming the article ruined her life, leaving her unemployable in Greece and suffering from mental illness, ‘Herald Sun’ concluded.

Gabrielle Lord and her taxi driver cousin George

By Socrates Tsourdalakis

(Stories that were not included in the “History of Cretans in Oceania”)

From Athens, in 1981, Gabrielle Lord rang the telephone exchange in Chania searching for a distant relative, a great uncle, who must have been in his nineties by then, who knew her great – grandfather, Constantine Koukousakis, that had arrived in Australia on board the British steam ship Galatea in 1866.

She hoped that her sole surviving relative still lived in the village of Tsikalaria in the Kissamos district of Crete. The operator at the telephone exchange in Chania seemed to know her great uncle because, he replied: “Kaput, kaput 40 days”, indicating that he had died 40 days earlier.

Despite her disappointment, because she had not managed to see her great uncle, she decided to visit and see for herself her great grandfather’s village.

From Chania she takes a taxi for Tsikalaria. The curious taxi driver, with broken English, asked her why she was visiting Tsikalaria and she explained to him that her great grandfather was Constantine Koukousakis from that village.  Koukousakis you said? He stopped the car suddenly at the side of the road and with great joy he said: “Kiss me, we are cousins! My mother was a Koukousakis before she married.” Truly, quite a coincidence!  Only a mountain cannot meet another mountain, as the Greek saying goes.

At Tsikalaria there was a great reception and a feast was laid out in her honour.

Gabrielle, who lives in Sydney today, is a writer of some 14 novels. 25 years later, she visited Crete again. She was planning to write a novel, to be titled “the Woman Who Loved God”. It was to be about an Australian painter who came to Crete and lived in a village house that she had inherited from her grandmother.

Gabrielle had chosen Crete not only because of her roots but also because she wanted to combine the wilderness of the nature and the ancient monuments with a story of love for painting, about a woman disinterested in men but only interested in art, painting the sea, the god Poseidon, ancient temples, Byzantine churches, synagogues, icons, altars, and many other such things. She wanted to write while living in Crete, the island of her great grandfather, to gather all that information that was needed to make her novel alive.

Finally she didn’t manage to write this novel as she had to start writing a series of 12 novels that currently are being made into a television serial. She deferred writing her novel for 2010 when she was to return to Kasteli again.

I read about all these things in an article, in the newspaper The Australian a few weeks ago, and this prompted me to get in touch with her to search together with her for the great grandfather, Constatine Koukousakis, whom I had not come across during my research for my book, “The history of Cretans in Oceania from the 19th century”. How did this happen?

The first Greeks that came to Australia were prone to change their surnames, to Anglicise them, by changing their ending, to avoid the racial discrimination and deportation for those that were illegal. This unfortunately was quite prevalent those days. So her great grandfather from Koukousakis became Kookoosachi, Koosachi, Koosache.

Constantine in 1928

Following extensive research in the Australian National Archives I established that Constantine Koukousakis left during the Turkish occupation, long suffering due to its many insurrections from Crete to Kythera, which during that period was an English protectorate . He worked initially on some British Navy steam ships and in 1866 arrived in Australia with the steam ship “Galatea”.

His great granddaughter, Gabrielle Lord, says  that according to family tradition he initially went to Bendigo, in the state of Victoria, searching for gold. Unfortunately I was unable to find information supporting this view.

It is quite likely though, because in that area gold had been discovered in 1851 and hundreds of gold prospectors were searching for gold, amongst them also some Greeks. It is possible that he left the steam ship “Galatea” in Melbourne and from there went to Bendigo where he met other Greeks to search for gold.

Two years later we find him travelling on board the steam ship “Alexandria” from Maryborough of Queensland to Sydney on 24.8.1868 and a month later on 19.9.1868 working as a third cook on steam ship Wonga Wonga travelling from Melbourne to Sydney.

Constantine Kookoosachi family about the end of 19th century

He stayed in Sydney from there on permanently and he worked as a cook at the “Australian Hotel” for a few years, according to family tradition. In 1873 he married an English woman, Elizabeth Ellen Binks, at the suburb of Waterloo in Sydney at a Catholic church, with whom he had 13 children.  They were Ernest (1874-1945), Elizabeth (1876-1943), Thomas (1878-1944), Marigo (1880-1881), the twins Ethel and Blanche (1881-1882), Greta (1884-1950), George (1886-1889), Percy (1890-1966), Harold (1893- ?), James (1895-1956), William (1897-1897) and John (1899-1989) .

It should not be seen as strange that he married in a Catholic church, as during that period there were no Orthodox churches in Australia and the requirements of Orthodox people were being taken care of by Anglican, and in some cases, Catholic churches. From the dates above we can also see that some of the children died at a very early age. Quite a few survived though and today his descendants live in many areas of Australia and New Zealand.

One of his children was Percy Kookoosachi, who fought as volunteer during the First World War in Gallipoli in 1915 and in France in 1918. On September 18, 1918, the Australian 13th battalion, with which he was serving, took part in its last offensive action in France, this time around Le Verguier, in the Somme, where Percy Kookoosachi was wounded . He was awarded three war medals, one for his service in Gallipoli and two in France.  He returned to Australia early in 1919.

Other Greek volunteers who fought in this war were Jack Marck, John Zavitsanos, Kostas Aronis, Robert Krokos, Atha Halkas, Leonidas Manousou, Nikos Rodakis, George Papas, Minas Alsanis, Anastasios  Rembea, Peter Randos, who was killed, also the Cretans George Cretan (Bikouvarakis) who was wounded and also received three war medals, Joseph Voyatzis, and many others.  (see Socrates Tsourdalakis’ book ‘‘ The Cretans of Oceania from the 19th century’’.

In October of 1876, Constantine Koukousakis was awarded British (Australian) citizenship and from then on he lived and worked in the Sydney suburb of Merrylands until 1934 when he died at the age of 85. He was buried at the Rookwood cemetery.

According to the obituary in the Sydney Morning Herald of 30.3.1934 he was one of the founders of the Granville Catholic Church. He was survived by 8 of his children

In 1951 his wife Elizabeth also died and was buried with her husband Constantine.

The grave headstone of Constantine Kookoosachi & wife Elizabeth (Photo courtesy June Bullivant)