People Australia

Ivan Kosovich, n.d.

Ivan Kosovich (1913-1975) journalist, consul and political activist

Birth: 31 January 1913 at Zaostrog, near Makarska, Dalmacija in Croatia, son of Jure Kosovich (1913-1975), vigneron, and Iva, née Banovich (1890-1957). Marriage: 10 November 1945 at St James's Anglican Church, Sydney, to Frances (Frana) Elizabeth Tomasich (1922-2013), a typist from Dalmatia. They had two sons. Death: 15 October 1975 at his home in Chester Hill, Sydney: Religion: Catholic. 

• Emigrated to Australia, Swan (Herne Hill) Western Australia, with his mother to join his father who emigrated earlier to New Zealand and later to Australia, 1925. Ivan attended evening school to learn English and became a proficient speaker and writer.
• He was secretary in 1934 of a group initially called Militant Workers Movement (BRP) which had been formed in Broken Hill, 1928, and resolved in 1933 to form a new Australia-wide organisation with the Progressive Federation of Yugoslav immigrants in Australia of which he was a part.
• He was editor of all publications in 1934 including news sheet ‘Borba’, which was transferred to Sydney in 1933. By 1936 there were thirty branches of the organisation around Australia.
• In 1943 he became president of the Yugoslav Aid Committee, which was launched by the executive of the Progressive Federation of Yugoslav immigrants, in consultation with many branches, to raise funds for Yugoslavia. It collected £100,000 pounds in cash and the same amount in food, clothing and for shelter. He was also involved in Federation activities in the ‘Spanish Aid Committee’, 1936.
• Appointed first Consul of the new Federal People Republic of Yugoslavia in 1945, he resigned from all positions in the Federation. 
• Kosovic attended an All Slav Congress in Belgrade in 1946. He was re-called to Yugoslavia in 1950 and transferred to Zagreb as a journalist to contribute to various Croatian and Yugoslav newspapers, mainly on British Commonwealth affairs. Returning to Australia he settled at Bass Hill, in outer Sydney, and bought a shop with his brother Harry.
• Ivan Joined the Australian Labor Party in the mid-1950s. Secretary of the Bass Hill branch of the ALP, in the late-1950s to mid-1960s, he was president from the late-1960s to the mid-1970s.
• He started the newspaper ‘Yugoslav Australian Journal’ (JAL), in 1960. Chairman of newly-formed ‘Coordinating Committee of National Communities from Yugoslavia’, NSW, in the early 1970s, he was chairman of the Yugoslav Languages Program. He was president of the Yugoslav Community Club ‘Novi Dom’ and later re-named ‘Jadran Hajduk’, from the mid-1960s and mid-1970s (not continuously).
• He was a member of the First Experiment Committee Radio 2EA and 3EA in 1975. Became seriously ill and resigned from the radio.
• Cause of death: heart disease.