Welcome

Looking back over the past 11 Conferences on various Greek Islands, we sometimes wondered whether we could find yet another idyllic island on which to host you all for another Conference. We thought we might be running out of venues, but not this time!

For our 12th Conference in June 2009 we really believe we have found the best of the truly Greek islands (ie not totally "touristy") in Samos in the northern Aegean Sea. For those of you who have sampled our previous Conferences, be prepared for a brand new Greek experience on this beautiful small island.

During the 1950s and 60s many families from Samos migrated to Australia for a new life, and now some 50 years later a significant number of the descendants of those families are heading back to Samos to work and enjoy a new lifestyle. We met many of those men and women on our site visit: Irena, from Cheltenham in Victoria who went back to Greece to study archaeology and who has settled in Samos in the village of Karlovasi and who will be one of your guides; Sophia (who is in the Mayor's office and is working with us to arrange the Cultural Evening for the Conference), who hails from Newcastle; and Stavros, a most informative taxi driver who could give us the football scores from almost every state in Australia, who has packed up his family in Brisbane and come back to to the place from where his grandparents left to start a new life in Australia. So let's all start a reverse migration of Australian Doctors and Lawyers back to Samos in June 2009 to meet all these new Samiotes and to rekindle old friendships and make new ones within the delegates who have succumbed to the magical pull that draws delegates to our Conferences on the Greek Islands.

Once more our Keynote Speakers are brilliant and diverse:

Lord Alec Broers, engineer, science and technology expert, who incidentally was educated at Geelong Grammar in Victoria, comes to us from London;

The Hon John Winneke, Queens Counsel, Supreme Court Judge and well remembered by Melburnians as a great ruckman with the Hawthorn Football Club in the 1950s; and Professor Marie Bashir, Governor of New South Wales, Psychiatrist and Chancellor of the University of Sydney.

Our pre-Conference tours to Turkey or Spain offer a wonderful week of exploring the best of what these destinations have on offer, as well as providing a great way to meet other delegates prior to the Conference. Following the Conference you should also consider joining our post-Conference tours to Egypt or the lesser known Bulgaria, both of which are also fascinating destinations for which we have put together top quality programmes.

What else can we offer you all at this 12th Conference? We hope an abundance of fun, friendship, sun and sea, the best of Samos' food and wine, stimulating professional presentations from our many speakers, who we unashamedly regard as the very best of both professions in Australia and Greece, and lastly a truly memorable week.

I look forward to greeting you as you arrive in reception at the Doryssa Seaside Resort in Samos.

With best wishes
Jack Harty AM

Copyright 2008. Greek/Australian International Legal and Medical Conference.
For more information contact Jenny Crofts at jennycrofts@ozemail.com.au