For decades, the decaying Olympia milk bar in Stanmore in Sydney’s inner west, terrazzo tiling underfoot and tired signs spruiking “smokes” and “sweets”, was a source of intrigue for passersby on bustling Parramatta Road. Few ventured inside, but it was a treasured part of urban lore.
Now, there appears to be hope for the Olympia’s restoration. A development application lodged with Inner West Council in November details plans by the new owner, local businessman Paul Barone, for a million-dollar renovation.
It includes an upmarket four-bedroom residence above the shop, a new second floor including a roof terrace, and repairs to the historic shopfront and interior. “Repair is prioritised over replacement,” the planning documents say.
Listed as a heritage item under local planning controls, the Olympia is “a rare largely intact survivor of a 1930s-1960s suburban milk bar”, a heritage impact statement accompanying the development application says. Existing signage will be repaired or replaced “like for like” and shop fittings including the counter will be restored and reinstated.
The proposal has piqued the interest of locals and milk bar experts alike.
Shut by the council in 2017 over safety concerns, the Olympia was the sole surviving link to the city’s formerly thriving milk bar culture, led by Greek migrants. Its intensely private owner, Nicolas Fotiou, lived onsite until 2021. He died two years later, aged 86.
Melbourne-based author and publisher Eamon Donnelly, who has a background in photography, illustration and advertising, has spent decades documenting milk bars around Australia.
His second book, The Milk Bars Book Vol II: A Sweet History, concludes with a bittersweet reflection on the Olympia. Donnelly first enjoyed a milkshake there “exactly 10 years ago”.
“Even 10 years ago, I thought, any day now I’m going to miss out on visiting the last standing traditional milk bar that has developed such a cult following,” he said.
Eamon Donnelly has spent decades documenting Australian milk bars.Credit: Mark Lobo
“I went in, it was dark, Mr Fotiou was behind the counter down the back. I think I got a chocolate milkshake and a toasted cheese sandwich with white bread. I sat at the laminex table on the vinyl chair ... and just absorbed it quietly, peacefully.”
Donnelly, who served as a history consultant on the ABC TV series Back in Time For The Corner Shop, visited the historic Rio Milk Bar in Summer Hill on the same day and met its owner George Poulos, who died the following year. The Rio was later reinvented as a small bar.
“It was the greatest day in this whole journey,” Donnelly said. “The Rio was sort of the Olympia’s little sister, in a way.”
The Olympia’s ‘unique’ features
Leonard Janiszewski, social historian and curator at Macquarie University, co-authored Greek Cafés & Milk Bars of Australia with his partner, documentary photographer Effy Alexakis.
“The Olympia was the last of its kind,” Janiszewski said. “There was no other milk bar of its vintage, in terms of when it was established and what few changes had taken place, that had been Greek-run.
“And, indeed, Nicolas Fotiou the last of his kind.”
Janiszewski and Alexakis had visited Fotiou at the milk bar several times over the years before his death, and the pair has traced Fotiou’s history in Australia from his arrival on board the migrant ship Cyrenia in 1955.
Fotiou’s family have said he left the Greek island of Lemnos with his older brother John in 1949.
Nicolas worked for a time at the Silver Key Cafe in Wagga Wagga before the brothers reunited in Sydney and took over running the Olympia, which had opened in 1939.
Initially, a door, and later a window, connected the milk bar and adjoining Olympia picture theatre, subsequently renamed Olympia De-Luxe. The theatre became a roller-skating rink in the 1960s.
John died in 1981. Nicolas kept the Olympia alive, but by the ’80s business was declining.
Janiszewski said the Olympia had a “very unique” feature: a row of “island mirrors and island service counters” behind the front service counter. Those counters, based on an American concept, were used to direct customers to queue for specific products.
The island mirrors were “still there in Fotiou’s time … but behind the pre-fabricated shelves that he had put up”.
Booth seating was removed in the 1960s.
As to plans to revive the milk bar, details are scant beyond the proposed use of the site as “food and drink premises”. Janiszewski said a business plan was essential.
SYDNEY’S MILK BARS: A GLOBAL EXPORT
“The milk bar concept is a fusion between the Greek galactopoleion, which means milk shop … and the drugstore soda parlour in the US,” said Leonard Janiszewski, social historian and curator at Macquarie University.
It was created in Australia by Mick Adams – Greek migrant Joachim Tavlaridis – and a plaque in Sydney’s Martin Place commemorates his Black and White 4d (fourpence) Milk Bar, which opened in 1932.
“By 1937, there were 4000 milk bars across the country,” Janiszewski said. “It then went on to be a global export. The focus was on milk shakes; no table service, no food.” Milk shakes then were health products with ingredients such as eggs, honey and nuts.
“You have very limited street trade. They have to have a business plan which is sustainable, not where you’re going to have a first run ... of people coming in for nostalgic reasons.
“It depends how well they bring it back to what it was, or it becomes simply a pastiche of memory that is what they think a milk bar was like, not what it was actually like.”
Janiszewski said lessons could be learnt from Poland where links had been forged between historic milk bars and museums to provide tours.
Offering “add-ons”, such as “hosting a function, but also the creation of books and various paraphernalia like aprons”, might also allow the business to become “self-sustaining”, he said.
‘A rich history of family and survival’
Illustrator and designer Emma Simmons, co-owner of the Summer Hill art gallery, shop and studio Sweets Workshop, started illustrating Sydney shopfronts and facades in about 2008 as a way of documenting them before they disappeared.
Simmons said she had noticed the Olympia - a “time capsule” - many times while on the bus or driving past, and was drawn to the different textures in the facade, akin to “a rich tapestry or a patchwork”.
Her limited edition art prints of the Olympia struck a chord and sold out, but the illustration is still available on her popular cushion covers.
“I think it’s just been a fascination for so many because of the mystery surrounding it,” she said. “Obviously, there was a rich history of family and survival.”
Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.