Priest’s formidable legacy -Dominican/Australia/Mission & Justice
Christopher Pearson; 15/3/08
The Latin, in Lonsdale Street, was a much-loved Melbourne restaurant. It closed in 2001 but there’d been an establishment trading under that name on the site, or thereabouts, since 1924, enjoying a consistently high reputation for Italian food. It attracted a motley clientele, including prosperous Italians, bon vivants, bohemians, several generations of the Catholic undergraduates’ club, the Newman Society and the inner circle of B.A. Santamaria’s National Civic Council. Many of the patrons ate there regularly for more than 50 years and the idiosyncrasies of some longstanding customers meant that only seasoned staff were allowed to wait on certain tables. On my first encounter with Peter Knowles, the subject of this brief memoir, I invited him to dinner at the Latin. Having heard about his connections with the Newman Society and the NCC, I wanted to see him on his home ground. It was a late winter evening in 1999 and he arrived wearing a suit and tie, wrapped in a once splendid but slightly seedy vicuna overcoat.
See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23374654-7583,00.html