MILLIONAIRE'S BOOK LINK WITH DARWIN

"Golden Greek" Constantine Souvlis plants a kiss on former Queensland Premier Anna Bligh when he was a finalist in the Australian of the Year Queensland Awards .

The son of a poor Greek pearl diver who worked for the Paspalis / Paspaley family in Port Hedland and Darwin, is now worth $100 million and tells how he made his fortune in a new book to be launched on July 27. He is Constantine Souvlis, 86, a property developer and retailer on Queensland’s Fraser Coast, his biography- KING CON-is dedicated to "every Greek who came to Australia to find a better life".

The book has been written by former News Limited, Fairfax, APN News and Media, Channels 10 and 7 journalist and broadcaster Toni McRae, who spent a few months in Darwin in the 1990s editing the then Palmerston Suburban, now the Darwin Sun.

Mr Souvlis AM says he learned from his father Mick how hard work could pave the way to making big money."The trouble was my father forgot all that after he left the Paspaleys and went out on his own commercially fishing and running fish and chip shops with my mother Chrissanthi. He turned to gambling and women and that was the end of the father I used to admire. So I determined never ever to be like him and I made my own way in life."

Mick Souvlis, a sponge diver on the remote and rugged Greek island of Kastelorizo, shipped to Sydney around 1911 and became attached to the Theodosis Paspalis family , destined to become Australia’s foremost pearl merchants. Paspalis senior, a former tobacco merchant , and his family went to Port Hedland where he set up a grocery store and he bought a share in a pearling lugger. Theodosis died five years later , but his sons Michael and Nicholas and daughter Mary continued their father's interest in pearling.

Mick Souvlis followed Nick to Darwin and worked for him in the pearling industry here for at least a year before eventually moving to Ingham in Queensland with his new wife Chrissanthi. In Ingham, the couple’s first child, Con, was born in September 1925. Con moved to Brisbane with the family and then to Perth where he signed up to fight Japanese in WW2 on the island of Bougainville. After the war , he and his mother bought a fruit shop in Brisbane and in the 1950s Con moved to Maryborough on the Fraser Coast, took one look at the nearby fishing village of Hervey Bay and “I smelt money”. King Con’s foreword has been written by His Eminence, Archbishop Stylianos, Primate of the Greek Orthodox Church in Australia.

***King Con’s recommended retail price is $30 and books can be obtained from July 27 from Con Souvlis’ Betta Electrical Store at 138 Freshwater Street, Torquay, Queensland, Fraser Coast, Qld; 4655. Betta Store Phone: 4125 2555 and ask for Rosemarie Wright to place orders.Mr Souvlis’ Betta retail store website is: consouvlis@bettastores.com.au