There is no doubt that Greeks are doing it tough but it takes a while here, exploring the different strands of Greek life to get a real sense of the social impact of the crisis. With youth unemployment at 50%, young people have been hit particularly hard. While older Greeks are losing their assets and investment, the younger generation is feeling cheated of a future.
REPORTER: Mark Davis
You don't need to wonder far on the streets of Athens to see the pain and distress that is unfolding here.
SINGER: 'The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind.'
Growing numbers are homeless and hungry.
WOMAN (Translation): Careful, we are not pigs.
MAN (Translation): I know you’re not.
This food distribution centre in Athens is run by the church. Three years ago it supported about 300 people. Now it hands out 1,100 meals a day. So many people now they need to be corralled for their own safety.
MAN 2 (Translation): In the past we’d let them all in together, men, women and children and we had broken legs, arms, children would be trampled underfoot. The majority are the elderly who have been evicted because they can’t pay the rent.
OLD MAN (Translation): Move on. All the rulers are dirty. Let them come and arrest me. What else are those thieves going to take? They have stolen everything. What do they want?
Shipping has been part of the economic life blood of Greece and a lifeline for Athenean workers. Thousands of ships have been built and repaired here at the Perama shipyard. Now every day men turn up for work but there is little to go around.
REPORTER: When was the last time you worked? How much work are you getting?
WORKER (Translation): I have had two months’ work a month ago. That is all the work I have done this year.
REPORTER: How many ships would have been here a few years ago?
SOTIRIS POULIKOGIANIS, UNION LEADER: Every day, maybe 100, 150. Every day you can see here 100, 150 ships. Today it is only one or two today.
REPORTER: One or two.
SOTIRIS POULIKOGIANIS: One or two.
The union leader, Sotiris Poulikogianis is struggling to stem the tide.
SOTIRIS POULIKOGIANIS: In 2008 here works about 6,000 people. Now only 500.
REPORTER: 500 from 6,000?.
SOTIRIS POULIKOGIANIS: 500 today. So the problem is very big and it is not only for one day. It is every day - every day.
Those lucky enough to have jobs are having their pay reduced and conditions squeezed. Today they are voting to take strike action.
WORKER (Translation): They are unscrupulous, they have no shame. All they want is to put more euros in their pocket.
Nearly all of them with families to feed, it is a bold move.
REPORTER: How hard is it for people here, how hard is it for you?
WORKER 2 (Translation): I am finding it very difficult to cope, but it is not only me, the majority…for all of us who live in this district. We have children fainting from hunger in schools. There are families with no bread or milk, things are very serious and we are talking about 21st century Greece. They want to turn us into 21st century slaves.
It is the first week of summer and the ferries at the port of Piraeus are gearing up for the coming season. This is the main departure point for holiday-makers to the Greek Isles. Friends Matoula and Nikos are joining a handful of tourists on the journey for the nearby island of Aegina, not for the sunshine, Matoula is looking for work.
MATOULA: So I am going to find a job to do with a travel agency. Since I had one - a travel agency - but I had to close it for economic reasons.
When she ran her own agency, Matoula used to earn up to 3,000 Euros a month. Now she says she would be happy with a salary the tenth of that doing any job in the industry.
MATOULA: I am now 30 years old. It is a very good age. It is the age of creation and everything is a mess now.
Just 45 minutes away from Athens, Aegina is a favourite get away for locals. Or it used to be - until the crisis struck.
MATOULA (Translation): How do you rate the tourist situation? Is there any future?
WOMAN (Translation): It’s uncertain, we don’t know.
Business and employment here so dependent on local tourism has dried up. Back in Athens, Greek Australian Nick Geronomis has built himself a mini business empire with two hotels, a fish and chip shop and a cafe bar. He is highly exposed but is more upbeat than most.
NICK GERONOMIS, BUSINESSMAN: You have to look at the upside as well as the downside. The downside is business is down a bit, big deal. It will go up again next year. We take a long-term view of everything.
For Nick the risk in doing business in Greece isn't the current economic decline - it is the potential consequences if Greece defaults on its loan.
REPORTER: The popular sentiment now seems to walk away from it.
NICK GERONOMIS: That might be the popular sentiment but the reality is that once you have signed a contract - I mean you come in here and have a cup of coffee I don't want you walking away without paying and it is exactly the same thing.
REPORTER: It sounds simple enough but is it not what most politicians are saying.
NICK GERONOMIS: Well, no, what they are saying is they are trying to renegotiate it. After you have drunk the coffee you can say, "Listen, that was a bad coffee...".
Matula and Nikos have returned from Aegina and have joined a few friends in town. All of them have been employed as professionals in the private sector. Half of them are now unemployed. Like many of their generation, most of this group are hoping that Syriza can provide enough of a jolt to get life in Greece back on track.
REPORTER: Do you see a way out in your own lives?
YOUNG WOMAN: We don't know what to expect the miracles or someone to make changes. You know, hope dies last. We will see.
REPORTER: Hope dies last, that’s nice. Well, you are all in the prime of your lives though. How long can you wait and keep your optimism?
NIKOS: I don't want to leave, but I think that finally I will have to do, leave. I have a different philosophy. I think that hope dies first.
Is it not exactly scientific polling but fascinating talking to this random group of friend, hardly radicals, one a lawyer, one works in a bank but all of them furious about the debt burden and seething with an anti-European move.
YOUNG MAN: They prefer to let people to eat from the garbage but not to give their money to people.
REPORTER: But if those loans didn't come you would be eating from the garbage.
MATOULA: Really I think this - we don't owe money to nobody.
REPORTER: Really?
MATOULA: I think it is a game, it started from Germany. This is my opinion. Germany still owes us many money from the Second World War so where is that money?
REPORTER: Does it worry you if you left the EU? You would feel great?
MATOULA: Great. We are not for Euro, we are never for euro.
REPORTER: How would you feel, if you left the EU, would it upset you in any way if you leave the Euro?
MAN 3: I want to stay in the union, but in a different union, not the one that we have now, a union of people and state, not a union of corporations and banks and money transfers that we have right now.
REPORTER: If Greece walks away from these loans, who will lend to Greece?
YOUNG MAN: I make another question - if Greece goes away who is going to lose more money? We are going to have - it is our problem or them.
REPORTER: Their problem.
YOUNG MAN: I think a European Central Bank has said that. That if Greece leaves the Euro, they lose one trillion. Two times our debt.
REPORTER: Huge.
MATOULA: If we be destroyed, we take all Europe.
REPORTER: Take it down with you. And you will take down Australia and take down America with you.
MATOULA: We are Greeks right, we can do everything, I think.
And that kind of anti-European sentiment is everywhere in Greece at the moment.
Reporter
MARK DAVIS
Camera
RYAN SHERIDAN
Producers
GARRY MCNAB
Editors
MICAH MCGOWN
NICK O’BRIEN
Translations/Subtitling
GEORGE POULARAS
Original Music Composed by VICKI HANSEN