TasWeekend: A place to call home

PETER and Dennis Behrakis saw Salamanca’s potential in the late 1970s, when the area was little more than rows of derelict, rat-infested warehouses.

Businessmen Dennis, left, and Peter Behrakis started operating a fruit and vegetable store in Salamanca in the late 1970s. The business’s success gave them the money to purchase other property in the area. Picture: RICHARD JUPE

TAKE a minute sometime to stop at Salamanca on a warm evening and soak up the scene: the buzz, the noise, the conviviality and the warmth of the sandstone walls are all part of the ambience. It is an exciting precinct, the crucible of everything that is the essence of Tasmania in the 21st century.

History abounds in the rows of sandstone warehouses, built from local stone by convicts and extended warehouse by warehouse as the bustling port of Hobart grew fast from the 1830s. The warehouses were once bulging with whale oil and products as whalers seeking huge profits slowly decimated the southern right whale population. They were also filled with wool bales, fruit and grain, tough and sweaty wharf labourers and fruity language.

Those same buildings have morphed into trendy restaurants, wine bars, coffee shops, galleries and artist studios: a more vibrant cultural scene you’d have trouble finding anywhere else.

Incredibly, just a few decades ago, the Salamanca area was the back end of town. The warehouses were dark and dingy, many derelict and boarded up. Others were used to store grain and played host to a solid population of mice and rats.

The run-down and derelict buildings in Salamanca Place in 1969.

Part of Salamanca’s transformation can be attributed to an event a few hundred kilometres north of Hobart, four decades earlier, when a teenage Greek immigrant arrived on Australian shores. The immigrant ship Patris made 91 voyages to Australia between 1959 and 1975, delivering more than 1000 passengers at a time. Most were Greeks heading to Australia to forge a new life in a country full of hope and well-paid jobs. Patris and her Chandris Line sister ships delivered hundreds of thousands of Europeans who went on to change the face of Australia.

The ships were austere but the mood aboard was something else: hustle, bustle, party time and no shortage of ouzo and grappa. Everyone was full of expectation and a modicum of fear for the voyage into the unknown, with many families daunted by the prospect of finding work to start a new life for the kids. Some babies were even born at sea, testament to the desire to move on in hope.

Just a few days before Easter in 1970, the 16,000-tonne Patris docked yet again at Port Melbourne, and more than 1000 Greeks – kids, parents and grandparents – poured down the gangplank to collect their worldly belongings in boxes and suitcases from the pier to start the adventure.

Among them on this cool autumn day was the lone Greek teenager Peter Behrakis, who landed with a suitcase packed neatly by his mum and $150 in his pocket. The shy 19-year-old made his way with hundreds of others to the migrant hostel at Brooklyn, where his life in Australia began.

Peter had studied radio electronics at night school in Athens and tossed in a good job with Hoover. With limited English, electronics was now out of the question, and he landed a job at a bakery in the northern suburb of Coburg, starting long before sunrise to get the loaves ready. A production line job at a Footscray factory, making spare parts for General Motors Holden, followed. Every day, robotically, he pushed out the car parts.

In 1972, the future course of his life was set when he travelled to Tasmania to meet a friend. He liked it so much he moved here the next year.

When he started working as a kitchen hand at the former Medallion Restaurant in Elizabeth St (now the site of Banjo’s bakery), he had no idea he would become one of the pioneers who would make Salamanca the place it is today. In fact, he didn’t even go near Salamanca for several years – most people in Hobart gave large parts of the waterfront precinct a wide berth when it came to going out and having fun, though the Ball and Chain restaurant was popular down near the grain silos and there were several pubs along the strip.

Peter Behrakis and his wife Vicki in 1975 at the Rokeby milk bar, when Peter was just 24.

Also down the grain silos end of Salamanca, the arts community was taking up residence in some of the warehouses. In 1976, the Salamanca Arts Centre came into being. Seven somewhat dilapidated warehouses were bought by the State Government and handed to the centre for peppercorn rent, on the proviso it cleaned up the buildings and promoted a diverse art and culture program. The rest is history.

About that time, Peter took a job on the North-West Coast, managing a team of painters at Rennison Bell. Then, with money in his pocket, he headed back to Hobart.

His entrepreneurship started with a milk bar at Rokeby and it was then his lifetime business partner, brother Dennis, who arrived in Australia a year after him, was lured south from Melbourne to join forces. They didn’t know it, but a business empire was just about to emerge.

About this time, Peter and the Medallion Restaurant owner’s daughter Vicki fell in love and were married. The Behrakis brothers bought Stokes and Hammond in Burnett St, a fruit and vegetable wholesaling business, and then opportunity knocked at Salamanca Place in the late ’70s. They leased the current Salamanca Fresh premises from providores Clements and Marshall, who were not doing so well. Salamanca Fresh started in the building as a fruit and vegetable retailer. It was years before it expanded into a delicatessen as well.

“When we first came down here, there were no restaurants or bars or shops around here,” says Peter, joining Dennis at an outdoor restaurant on the Salamanca strip for our interview.

“There were a couple of pubs in Salamanca, but the rest of the buildings were dark and dingy warehouses, with rusting gutters. Most were used for storing grain. In those days, the streets weren’t busy at all. We started attracting lots of people. Each year, our business grew really fast; we had really strong growth. With all the people now starting to come down, a souvlaki bar opened up where Cargo is now.”

The brothers had good cash flow and bought Knopwood Hotel next door and Salamanca Fresh in 1983-84. “We could see the vision for Salamanca,” Peter says. “It was quite clear. All the wharf areas in all cities are the most expensive. Salamanca was right near the water, and we thought it was one of the best areas in Hobart. We are very proud of what it is today. I just love this place. We love this place.”

The first Salamanca Market in 1972.

The driver in the business, Peter likes to fly under the radar. Dennis, who is Tasmania’s longest-surviving heart transplant recipient, undergoing surgery at the St Vincent’s Hospital heart unit in Sydney in 1988, has been right by his side.

There’s no doubt Salamanca is part of the Behrakis family DNA. The brothers and their wives, Vicki and Maria, have lived and breathed Salamanca since the ’80s, and the family now own about 150m of street frontage from Cargo, Jack Greene Bar, Maldini, Salamanca Fresh, the Whalers Hotel and up Montpelier Retreat to the 7D theatre. They also own the Made in Tasmania premises next to Irish Murphys.

Brother Billy, who came into the business later, manages Salamanca Fresh stores at Salamanca and Davey St. Peter’s son Jeremy is in wholesale and Dennis’ daughter Soula and son Hristo work in retail.

The family’s latest project is a boutique hotel spread across the first and second floors and attic spaces of the Salamanca warehouses. An added dimension will be bringing the greenery of the Tasmanian wilderness inside the heritage apartments in the form of internal gardens on an impressive scale.

Salamanca Market is now a thriving event each weekend. . Picture: RICHARD EASTWOOD/TOURISM TASMANIA

Hobart architect Robert Morris-Nunn, responsible for the Henry Jones Art Hotel in the old IXL building, the new Mac 1 and floating Brooke Street Pier, has been engaged by the Behrakis family to design their boutique hotel properties.

All hotel rooms at Salamanca Place will be built within the existing rooflines, highlighting the raw timber beams, sandstone block walls and other structures.

The first stage will be about 50 suites across the top floors of Maldini, Jack Greene Bar, Cargo, Salamanca Fresh, the Whalers Hotel and up the street at 25 Salamanca Pl, over the upper levels of the Made in Tasmania property.

Stage two is not yet before council but may add more rooms to the existing properties.

“This will be Henry Jones–IXL all over again,” Morris-Nunn says. “We’re recycling the old buildings, as such, but this time we’re adding living plants to bring the wilderness of Tasmania into the suites. There will be vertical wall gardens, plants in light wells, and 25 Salamanca will be virtually a conservatory, with suites within it. People like to be in secret worlds, and this will offer that.”

Morris-Nunn describes the entire project as a “collaborative process”, with heritage and horticulture working together.”

When asked about the broader future of Salamanca, Peter is pragmatic. “It’s all about parking,” he says. “All the parking problems need to be solved. Multi-storey car parks close by would be the answer. Ideally, we would have cars out of Salamanca, but council needs to sort out the parking before moving the traffic out.”