With his stocky frame, magnificent flaring beard and eyes alive with energy, it is hard not to see Costas Georgiadis, as the embodiment of ancient Greek nature figure of Pan sans the goat legs. But it is not just his looks but also the knowledge he delivers on national television and online with an inexhaustible passion and energy that that have made him probably the most recognisable face for gardening and of land conservation in Australia.
“I am in awe of nature, I never get weary of delivering on nature and what it gives to us, Mr Georgiadis told Neos Kosmos. “The more I can deliver engaging stories and yarns, the more I can bring people in. The more excitement I give, the more I infect people with excitement about the environment.”
This week he is to be the online Master of Ceremonies for the National Landcare Conference a wide-ranging event (5 and 6 August) that is open to everyone to register with over 60 speakers to speak on a wide range of sustainable land management and conservation activities in country and urban settings.
“My conference role is to provide the thread between speakers and the panel discussions, drawing in and tying strands,” Mr Georgiadis said. “Because it is an online event, I need to keep it fun and moving between the segments so that people at home don’t get distracted. The conference is a very important opportunity.
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“My role is to show. land care s everywhere for everyone and it affects everyone. It is about shared visions tied to restoring, regenerating and protecting the environments you are in – it does not matter if you are living on 1,000 acres, living on the coast, close to a river or in a city.”
The message that has been a constant throughout his media career has been that landcare involves the community.
“It is important to know that we cannot do it alone and it does not mean you can’t do anything – damage (to the land) can be repaired, regeneration and change can happen. If we each bring one person on board with us, we can double land care overnight, it does not require a big investment or campaigns and promotions.”
The role of community in land care is something that Mr Georgiadis has drawn on from his own life. His pappou, Constantine, with his vegetable garden in North Bondi was a major influence from an early age. The knowledge that his grandfather passed to him was the dial that directed his path in life, qualifying as a landscape architect at the University of New South Wales and on to his media career spreading the message to the wider world.
The traditions and the knowledge that his grandfather instilled in the young Mr Georgiadis, he in turn drew from his own experiences from his family chorio (village) in northern Greece.
“Today’s word for ‘village’ is ‘community’. Everyone learnt skills (in growing plants and managing the land) that they passed on. You saw it and absorbed it in your life. It is how indigenous communities have done it. The kids saw yiayia and pappou working the land and growing things and absorbed it all (in their lives).
“That ties in so poignantly today. We have so many of our elders living lonely and disorientated and children who are looking for anchors in their lives. Children being around elders anchors them in life and the elders see life through the eyes of the little ones.
“In the (traditional) village, everyone is there. There is a wealth of knowledge and information that is exchanged,” Mr Georgiadis said. “The village was culturally important, if fed into an appreciation of the seasons. The first generation (who came to Australia) held on strongly to those traditions even as they they wanted their offspring to succeed as professionals. Now those professionals want to go back (to the knowledge of that time).
It is the transfer knowledge that finds common theme in Aboriginal land management in Australia where the elders traditionally pass their knowledge on to the young.
An aspect of the the Landcare Conference will be to look at Aboriginal land management including fire practices whose effectiveness are increasingly recognised today, particularly in wake of last year’s devastating fires.
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In today’s settings the word for village is “community”, Mr Georgiadis said.
Community groups provide what the village would provide – a wealth and exchange of knowledge and information.
“This is where Landcare groups and community garden groups share information, life stories and emotional attachment (to land). Any community or Landcare garden is a ‘bringing together’ – that morning tea is a bringing together. That is what a community ethos is about. the problem is that we have to provide the places for that (to happen).”
Since the late Bob Hawke launched the National Landcare Programme 30 years ago, it has grown from a rural-regeneration initiative to something far wider in its scope. There are now over 6,000 groups involved in all sorts of programmes from bush care to river and coastal care, urban and rural settings.
Involvement of youth
“There are also junior land care groups and it is invaluable to get the kids involved. If we cannot involve them with the issues in front of them, they cannot love and protect the land.”
He said movements like School Strike 4 Climate Australia reflected a generation of children who were informed and engaged.
“They have access to so much information. This generation is very media savvy and they will go right past you if you peddle spin to them. They are stepping up and making a difference.”
Even as I was interviewing him Mr Georgiadis broke off to link up on Zoom with a youth community group KidzFoodz that he was to have visited but for the COVID-19 restrictions.
The KidzFoodz is a community training initiative for young people who are on an 18-week hospitality course using community garden produce to make up to 500 food boxes a week for the homeless and 150 school lunches a week.
“I visit schools almost weekly and help with their gardens, sustainability programmes, waste management. ”
Whether it is through “Gardening Australia” on ABC or as “Costa the Garden Gnome on “Get Grubby TV” on ABC Kids, Mr Georgiadis’ aims in both programmes is to bring families together through gardening.
“The opportunity to do the children’s show means I reach more people. I don’t “dumb down’ anything (for the kids), I just present the material to them with a different energy. I am Costa, whatever outfit I am wearing.”
“Being able to give the tools and understanding of the landscape is a privilege and I will keep doing so until they compost me. I want to leave this place in as good a condition as I could have.”
For more information about the conference programme and to register go to National Landcare Conference website link www.nationallandcareconference.org.au
Costa, his garden and family history
Costa Georgiadis was born in Sydney in 1964. He grew up in North Bondi and lives in the family home where he has a vegetable garden with six chooks and grows plants on the verges on the street. He calls lockdowns a “slow down” and sees it as an opportunity for people to reconnect to nature that is around them and for him the garden is a place of refuge.
“I am Zooming on all the events I cannot go to. I miss the face-to-face contact and that has its impacts psychologically. there comes a point in the day when I have to go out into the garden and get my hands dirty, check on the chooks and feel the sun and air.” The garden draws not only birds, pollinators and wildlife but has long been a magnet for the kids in the neighbourhood.
I use the part of the nature strip to grow all sorts of greens including Horta for Costa and his chooks and it is a wonderful education magnet. Since I started the garden in 2010, people will walk past, say ‘hello’ and pay respect to the garden,” Mr Georgiadis said.
One way that Mr Georgiadis lets off steam is as a referee to local rugby union matches, a game he played from high school days. He also is a musician in a band.
He first went to Greece when he was 15 with a group of other Greek-Australian kids. He acted as an interpreter for those who could not speak the language. After qualifying from UNSW with a degree in landscape architecture, he spent the next few years alternating between Europe and Australia.
His family originate from Limnos, Thessaloniki and present-day Turkey. His grandparents are “a bit of a horiatiki salata in a sense”, he says: his mother’s side of the family came from Asia Minor in the wake of the Great Catastrophe of 1922.
His grandfather on his father Stan’s side, Constantine Georgiadis grew up in northern Greece and was living in Constantinople and was ust 13 when he had to flee. He travelled to Florida, then Cuba before finally establishing his roots in Australia.
He met Julia, who was from the village of Thanos on the island of Limnos in Australia in Queanbeyan and they married in the 1920s and moved to Nyngan in far western NSW.
The parents of his mother Anne also fled separately from Asia Minor with their families to settle in Australia in the 1920s. Isaac and Elpitha met in Sydney and settled in the inner west.