By Peter Prineas.
The Roxy Theatre in Bingara is a wonderful venue for a dinner dance. The Roxy auditorium has some of the most striking original Art Deco architecture to be seen in NSW and it still contains the original fixtures and fittings, including the ornate stucco plaster, paintwork and coloured lights from 1936.
Designed both as a picture theatre and a dance hall, it has an expansive floor of cypress pine boards, ideal for dancing the night away.
People will have the opportunity to do just that at a ‘Back to Bingara’ event by the Kytherian Association of Australia (KAA) on the weekend 18-19 March 2023.
Bingara some 560 kilometres north-west of Sydney, enjoys an admirable situation on the banks of the upper Gwydir River and the rich soils of the long extinct Kaputar volcano. From the early 1900s there were Greeks in Bingara. In 1907, Comino and Panaretto opened an ‘Oyster Saloon and Refreshment Room’ there.
Later, Kytherians Emanuel Aroney, Peter Feros, and George Psaltis, erected the Roxy building comprising the cafe, the cinema and a row of three shops. They also built a guest house nearby which is still standing. The Roxy building forms an attractive facade on Bingara’s main commercial way, Maitland Street.
The ambitious Roxy development opened with great fanfare in March 1936 but the partners were soon obliged under a bankruptcy settlement to assign the entire property to their creditors. Feros and Psaltis left Bingara while Aroney stayed and ran the Regent Cafe for many years.
In the early 1990s, a group of community members, among them Nancy MacInnes, recognised the Roxy’s significance and lobbied the council to restore the theatre. The council purchased the building in 1999 and with state and federal grants, set about restoring it to its former glory.
In 2006, after the Roxy’s re-opening, the publication of the book ‘Katsehamos and the Great Idea’ by the writer of this article (a grandson of Peter Feros), led to an upsurge in interest in the Bingara Roxy, particularly among Kytherians. Large Greek-themed gatherings were held in the town with the council-appointed Roxy Manager, Sandy McNaughton, and other council staff much involved in their organisation.
Donations from the Kytherian Association and the Nicholas Aroney Trust, and substantial government and council grants, funded the restoration of the Roxy Cafe and the development of the Roxy Greek Museum.
The museum was opened in April 2014 by the NSW Governor, the Hon Marie Bashir, and in 2015 it was awarded first place in its category of the Museum and National Gallery Awards. In 2017, the Roxy Theatre was formally recognised as having state heritage significance “as a rare surviving example of an Inter-War Art Deco cinema with its distinctive street presence and intact, luxurious, interior detailing.”
The ‘Back to Bingara Dinner Dance’ will be held on Saturday, March 18 at The Roxy Theatre, Bingara from 7pm. Tickets are $95 and can be purchased here: https://www.trybooking.com/CEFTQ
