DENIS MAKRIS
Greek Aussie achiever
17-12-1938 - 20-10-2015
Arriving by ship from Greece in 1952, 14-year-old Denis Makris was a penniless, illiterate, barefoot, boy-shepherd, full of optimism. Over the next 60 years he made and lost fortunes in an extraordinary career as a worker in - and owner and seller of - cafes, fish-and-chip shops, fruit emporiums, potato runs, scallop trawling, chook-plucking, fruit-picking, engineering and manufacturing. He became a self-taught refrigeration mechanic, sheet-metal artisan, inventor of engineering equipment and a state-of-the-art grappa distiller. In 1970 he started Richmond Food Machinery. Later he bought a company which makes the world's leading fans for commercial kitchen exhaust systems. 
Up to a year before he died at 76, Denis was still working six days a week and on the seventh day he went hunting for old tools at trash and treasure markets. With any remaining spare time he restored vintage cars with one of his four grandchildren. Not bad for an "uneducated" man who could neither read nor write Greek or English. "But I can count," he would tell admirers. Life was good to Denis but you could say he designed it that way. "My best decision," he said, "was boarding that ship to Australia. The second was marrying Mandy (Diamando) in 1962." Growing up in Greece, Denis lived through World War II, the Civil War and the death of his father. He had no more than one year's schooling and from an early age worked as a shepherd in the mountains of Kandila. He didn't wear shoes until he was 12 and even then, only occasionally.
Denis' uncles had migrated to Australia before him and after Denis followed, he found work in one of their cafes in Geelong. The youngster's first words of English were "yes please" and "show me". He worked seven days a week - 8am until midnight - for a year, after which he paid back his Â£200 ship fare to Australia.
He stayed another year in Geelong before spending two months picking grapes in Mildura, where he saved a further Â£200. At 16 he bought his first fish-and-chip shop in Geelong, a venture that failed, so he sold it and worked in another cafe while plucking chickens on his day off. Next move was to Ballarat where he worked in the well-known Mount Olympus and Spot cafes before buying a hamburger shop in Sydney Road.
He sold that shop successfully but made another business blunder when he bought a sandwich shop and watched Â£4000 go down the drain.
Undaunted, he found a job at the Elizabeth Street Hotel in Melbourne from 7.30am to 10am after which he walked to the New Excel cafe and worked there until 8pm. On weekends he worked as a waiter in a nightclub frequented by entertainment and sports celebrities where he served alcohol in coffee cups to overcome the archaic licensing laws of the time. Graham Kennedy and Bert Newton were frequent patrons.
After he married Mandy, the couple bought a fruit shop in the Southern Cross hotel but it failed and they lost their savings. Ever resilient, Denis drove taxis for 18 months before running a fruit shop at Rosebud. Over the six-week summer holidays he saved Â£1400 - his good fortune was about to start.
A potato farmer asked him to sell his spuds to fish-and-chip shops. It was such a lucrative business that he bought two more trucks but, after the price of potatoes escalated, he sold out. However during his "potato runs" he would often be asked to fix equipment and, despite having no training, he discovered he had a talent for repairing machinery.
This was to be the foundation of another business - but not before a five-year stint as ship's captain. Denis heard that there was money in scallops so he spent a year and Â£4000 building a scallop trawler, the Alex Vanessa, named after his daughters. He and Mandy worked seven days a week on the trawler for five years before selling the licence. The work was gruelling but generated enough to finance a new business, Richmond Food Machinery in Bridge Road, where Denis and Mandy bought, sold, repaired, rented, built and installed commercial kitchen machinery.
Last year the family celebrated 33 years in the business, now located in Coppin Street. Two of their three children, Nick and Alexandra, run it.
Among all his activities, Denis was an inveterate collector of vintage tools and machinery, especially espresso machines (including rare Gaggia, Atomic and Sputnik machines) and and a host of other catering equipment, as well as vintage cars which he restored, the latest a 1923 Essex. His collectables could easily fill a couple of museums.
Denis bought 800 cash registers from Coles for $6 each. Mandy was not too happy to have them stored in their garage but he reconditioned them and made around $100 for each machine.
In 1997, at an age when many men are considering retirement, Denis bought a company which supplied Richmond Food Machinery with fan/exhaust systems for commercial kitchens. The company, Cyclo Fans had been around since 1947, but needed Denis' Midas touch. He moved the company from Coburg to East Brunswick and reinvigorated the business.
Cyclo fans were originally designed in 1960 by a visiting NASA rocket engineer George Lorette. The business also gave Denis the opportunity, through necessity, to create machines to streamline the manufacturing process.
When asked about his qualifications he laughed. He was a natural engineer with a lateral mind and problem-solving mindset.
Over the years many had attempted to copy the Cyclo fans, including a Chinese manufacturer who flooded the market. For two years Denis had to lower his prices to compete, but he need not have worried - the competitor's fans proved faulty and the producer went out of business. Denis would say his only reservation about his own exhaust fan systems, which are visible on skylines around Melbourne and other parts of Australia, was that they never wore out.
Denis knew how to build businesses but friends and family were always more important. Former customers from the 1970s still dropped by Richmond Food Machinery on Saturday mornings to catch up and for two months each year he would visit Kandila, the Greek village he came from. Until the end of his life, he kept the shepherd's crook he brought to Australia 53 years ago.