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'Katsehamos' is the family nickname
of Peter Feros. The 'Great Idea' is
a reference to the ambitious Roxy
development in Bingara, but it also
refers to Greece's ‘national project’
of the 19th and early 20th centuries
to reclaim Constantinople, which
made huge demands on men of my
grandfather’s generation.

In my research I uncovered some facts
about the Bingara Roxy that may help
to set the record straight.

The theatre was developed by three men
comprising a partnership named Peters
and Co, but in 2004 there was confusion
about the partners. In his article, Gerry
Kennedy mentioned Comino as the
name of one of the three partners in
place of Emanuel Aroney.

An article in The Sydney Morning
Herald at the time mentioned Comino in
place of Peter Feros. I don’t know how
the name Comino arose but the names
of the three partners were Emanuel
Aroney, Peter Feros and George Psaltis.
Of the three, George Psaltis was the
chief mover in the Roxy development.

Old and disused buildings often have
their stories embellished in local
folklore and it seems that Bingara's
Roxy gave rise to a myth concerning
my grandfather. This was passed on to
Gerry Kennedy and his article mentions
that one of the Roxy partners, Feros,
committed suicide due to the failure of
the enterprise.
This story confuses Peter Feros and
the Roxy failure in 1936 with the
largely unrelated death four years later
of Phillip Feros who briefly resided in
Bingara in 1939-40. Peter Feros left
Bingara late in 1936 and went into
business in Murtoa in western Victoria.
He and my grandmother later retired
to Junee in southern NSW and lived
with my parents. Peter Feros died of
natural causes in the Junee Hospital in
December 1954.

CINEMAREC ORD 2011 7