REPIN, IVAN DMITRIEVITCH (1888-1949), coffee-shop proprietor and coffee importer, was born on 5 January 1888 in Novgorod province, Russia, son of Dmitri Ivanovitch Repin, a trader on the River Sheksna, and his wife Maria, née Pavlovna. Ivan studied engineering at the Mining Institute, St Petersburg. In that city on 21 April 1913 he married Alexandra Michaelovna Hrisonopolou, who came from the Crimea; they were to have two sons and two daughters. He was working in the Don basin in the Ukraine when the 1917 revolution broke out; he fled to the Urals, and then to Vladivostok.

Sailing from Shanghai with his wife, two daughters and brother Peter, Repin reached Sydney on 12 October 1925 in the Tango Maru. Life was not easy: he worked as a motor driver and later ran his own single bus line. He opened refreshment rooms at 152 King Street in September 1930 and was naturalized ...

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Source:

Australian Dictionary of Biography