Social historian Leonard Janiszewski and ethnographic photographer Effy Alexakis—renowned chroniclers of the Greek-Australian experience since the early 1980s—will deliver a special lecture at the Sydney Greek Festival on March 11 at 6pm, on the rise and cultural impact of the Greek milk bar.
Janiszewski and Alexakis will then gift their extensive archive to the State Library of New South Wales. The collection, spanning over four decades, comprises oral history interviews, rare photographs, and historical documents, capturing the rich heritage of Greek-Australian life and migration.
Since 1982, documentary photographer Effy Alexakis and sociocultural historian Leonard Janiszewski have explored the Greek-Australian experience through their acclaimed project and archive, In Their Own Image: Greek-Australians.
Alexakis’s photographs are held in major institutions, including the Australian National Gallery and the State Library of NSW. A top-ranked portrait photographer, she has received numerous arts and heritage grants. Janiszewski, also a curator at Macquarie University Art Gallery, has held prestigious history fellowships.
Together, they have produced touring exhibitions, five major books, three documentaries, and over 250 publications, cementing their legacy in Australian history and culture.
Janiszewski writes that the research was sparked because “much of Australia’s ‘mainstream history’ since European settlement has generally been enveloped by a persistent Anglo-Australian focus.”
In his research Janiszewski shows that the Greek Diaspora’s “collective experiences in the United States certainly challenged and changed public eating in Australia”.
“Its associated influences on popular culture through architecture, music and cinema, assisted in introducing American-style modernity to the nation – the ‘Greek café’ becoming an exceptionally popular symbol of modern public eating for the larger part of the 20th century,” writes Janiszewski.
He then asks, “But what of the milk bar?”
He points to Brothers Clarence and Norman Burt “who were operating a refreshment business in Pitt Street, Sydney, in 1929, three years before Mick Adams (Joachim Tavlaridis) established his Black & White 4d. Milk Bar at 24 Martin Place, had been proclaimed as the generators of the ‘milk bar concept’.”
“However, when we interviewed one of Adams’ daughters, Lilian Keldoulis in 2001, she claimed her father had created the milk bar in Australia. So, we started investigating.”
According to a mid-1930s issue of Glass (the Australian Glass Manufacturers’ journal), Burts Milk Bar did not open until 1934 at 76 Pitt Street, “not far from Adams’ establishment, and utilised much glass and stainless-steel construction in its art deco outfitting”.
The 1929 Burt brothers business at 265 Pitt Street which “primary source evidence only identified it as one of Sydney’s many refreshments businesses (soda parlours), not uniquely as a ‘milk bar'”.
Eureka! Janiszewski wrote about a newspaper advertisement by the Burt brothers around 1933 which “reinforced Keldoulis’ claim about her father”.
The claim of having the ‘first open milk bar‘ referred to the open frontage of their 1929 soda parlour business, and previous historians had misread their statement. After Adams left his milk bar businesses in the late 1950s, the remaining Burt brother never corrected the error. “A myth was created and perpetuated,” Janiszewski writes.
Newspaper and trade publications of the 1930s – within Australia and overseas – “further confirmed Adams as the creator of the modern milk bar concept, that merged transnational elements – the American drugstore soda fountain and the traditional Greek galactopoleion” or milk store writes Janiszewski.
“The concept essentially placed a primary commercial focus upon a rapid production and sale of milkshakes at a counter, without table or food service” he adds.
It follows that term ‘milk bar’ was, and has been,”often applied to what were actually, before Adams’ milkshake revolution, soda parlours”.
“Adams’ Black & White stands alone as the first modern milk bar” confirms Janiszewski.
Janiszewski in his extensive study reveals that “Adams’ milk bar not only evidences transnationalism in its creation but also its expansion, primarily through the Greek diaspora – during the 1930s and 1940s the modern milk bar concept travelled to South Africa, Great Britain, Western Europe, New Zealand, South Pacific islands, and later, even Japan”.
“It became one of Australia’s greatest food catering concept exports and one of our nation’s most recognised popular culture symbols,” the historian confirms.
The milk bar’s story demonstrates that “Australia’s contemporary past is far more complex than its persistent interpretive stickiness to British-Australianness”.
To ensure this vast archive is preserved and accessible for future generations, philanthropic funding is needed to digitise its substantial analogue component. The project, which began in 1982, includes a significant volume of pre-digital material requiring careful conservation and digital conversion.
The total funding goal is $300,000, with an individual philanthropist already pledging $50,000 towards this important initiative. The digitisation effort will safeguard the legacy of Greek-Australian contributions to Australia’s social and cultural fabric, making it accessible to researchers, students, and the wider community.
Bookings to attend the lecture: www.sl.nsw.gov.au/events/greek-australian-milk-bar-transnational-history
