Melbourne home to thousands of Greeks fleeing debt crisis

Melburnian Nikos Psaltopoulos said he was following his relatives' struggles in Greece, and found some casual workers were being paid just 2.30 US dollar an hour.

"It's soul destroying because we're seeing people we know who are educated working for less than 3 (Australian) dollars an hour, " he said.

Psaltopoulos said the social impact of the crisis was also taking its toll, and it was little wonder that many Greeks were choosing to come to Melbourne.

"It is quite dire, because people refer to this as a Greek debt crisis and what they're missing is that this is a massive humanitarian crisis of a level that we haven't seen before since the Great Depression," he said.

Antonis Kontogonis moved to Melbourne two months ago, and told the ABC that he knew of family members who had fled to Australia as well as England and Norway to search for work.

He said while his family would prefer to live and work in the motherland, the crisis was so deep that it was almost impossible to find work and live above the poverty line.

"I would like to be back (in Athens) but unfortunately, that cannot be," he said.