John’s History – The Paskulich Family Compiled and written by John Paskulich Western Australia 2013 ©1997-2013 John Paskulich

This is flag of the ‘Triune Kingdoms of Dalmatia, Croatia and Slavonia’ (1867 – 1918), then part of the Austro Hungarian Empire. It was the flag under which my grandparents were born.

Acknowledgements My special thanks go to the numerous authors and webmasters whose work enabled me to confirm much of the information appearing in this document. To brighten up this presentation I have included drawings and photographs obtained from the Internet and other sources and these have been acknowledged where possible.

Introduction

Contents

A brief history of Croatia The first Croats The great Croatian migration Serbia Unified Croatia The Mongol hordes The Turkish wars Islamic Slavs French influence in Croatia Yugoslav Croatia The World War 1939-1945 Independent Croatia Croatia through the ages (maps) The Croatian language and alphabet Dialects Historical written Croatian The Croatian alphabet Grammar and spelling A few useful expressions Novi Vinodol/ski The Vinodol Counts of Krk and the Frankopans History of Novi Vinodol Traditions People of Novi Novi family names My family names Piskulich and Dobric Nadimak Domazet Paskulich Some Family stories Charles Joseph Paskulich (1922 – 1993) Franjo Piškulić (1895 – 1984) and Marija Piškulić (1899 – 1975) Petar Dobrić (1897 - 1971) and Katarina Dobrić (1905 – 1983) John Charles Paskulich (1949- ) In Closing

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Introduction

This document is an extract of a book I started writing in the late 1990s as an open letter to my children and, ultimately, my descendants. At the time I thought I’d do a little research, put together a few pages and that would be it. Since then I have made contact with numerous previously unknown distant relatives, learnt an enormous amount about my heritage and realised that studying family history could easily become an obsession. I don’t apologise for inconsistencies in my language or writing style as this article is not a technical history. It is simply a more formal version of what happened in the past where an elder orally passed on the family traditions to the next generation. The Paskulich family in Australia began with the arrival of my parents in Western Australia (WA) from Novi Vinodol, Croatia, at that time part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. My father arrived as a seven year old with his mother and brother in 1929. Mum, then aged five, arrived with her mother in 1930. Both my grandfathers had emigrated to Australia some years prior to the arrival of their families. This scenario was very common in the early days. The men travelled to Australia first, found work, and when they’d saved enough, brought out their dependents. Our people never had the luxury of the assisted passages for migrants that appeared much later in Australia. My father-in-law, Ivan Mrša repeated this experience in 1960 and brought out his family including Neda, my first wife, in 1962. After an eventful earlier life in Africa, New Caledonia, New Zealand and France, Frank Piskulich emigrated here in 1926 and worked as an underground gold miner in Kalgoorlie WA. At the time of Frank’s arrival, Peter Dobric managed a farm in the “wheat belt”. The wheat belt is a fertile farming region extending in an arc from about 100 – 500 km around Perth WA. Peter originally arrived in WA in 1914 but spent a couple of years back in Croatia before returning to Australia in 1924. With the passage of time and the process of “Australianisation” many of our old family stories, history and traditions were lost. I can’t resurrect what’s gone but I can give some background about my family’s heritage. I am sure I have missed many interesting facts about our origins but there is certainly enough in the following stories to give you an idea of who we are and where we came from.

A brief history of Croatia

Modern Croatia is a small, boomerang shaped country facing the Adriatic Sea in central Europe. Located at the northern end of the Balkan Peninsula, it shares borders with six neighbouring countries. They are Slovenia to the northwest, Hungary to the northeast, Serbia to the east, Bosnia-Herzegovina to the south-east, Montenegro to the south and Italy to the west across the Adriatic Sea. The geographic shape of Croatia, along with its numerous and diverse neighbours gives an idea of the forces of history in the region. By world standards, Croatia is tiny. Its land area is approximately 57 000 square kilometres or about 80% of Tasmania’s and it has a population of about 4.5 million which is the same as that of Sydney NSW. One report suggested that there are more ethnic Croatians living outside Croatia than within it. There are around 120 000 people in Australia claiming Croatian heritage and I’m one of them. Croatia’s small size belies its influence on the history of central Europe.

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Modern Croatia Source: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/hr.html The first Croats The palaeontological record of the region is interesting. Northern Croatia supported one of the last enclaves of Neanderthal people in Europe. It seems that the Neanderthals were driven to this part of the European continent by the rise of modern man and finally died out about 28-30 000 years ago. In pre-history, the native peoples of the northern Balkans were Celts and Illyrians. A particular sub-group of Illyrians called the Liburni occupied the coastal strip between modern Rijeka and Šibenik. The Liburni were seafarers, warriors and pirates and the noted Roman warship the Liburna derived from their battle craft. It is highly likely that many of our own ancestors were Liburni who remained in the area and were absorbed into later Slavic tribes.

Liburnia. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liburnians Around 200 BC, the Liburni along with the rest of the Celtic/Illyrian tribes were conquered and subsequently administered by Rome until the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the early 5th century. The Albanian people are probably

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descendants of Romanised Illyrians that resisted the later Slavic incursions and held on to their old language which is believed to be based on early Illyrian and Thracian. Modern Croatia and Bosnia are in the region of the ancient Roman provinces of Pannonia and Dalmatia.

Roman provinces of Pannonia, Dalmatia and surrounds Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pannonia Between the time of the Roman withdrawal in the 5th century and the establishment of a unified Croatian kingdom in the 10 th century, the region struggled under various masters. The Byzantines (Eastern Roman Empire) initially took over the Roman settlements in Pannonia and Dalmatia but lost many of them, first to Hun attacks in the 5 th century, then the Ostrogoths who occupied the region for a few decades into the 6th century, then to Avar incursions in the late 6th century and finally the Croatian tribes in the 7th century. The Frankish rule of the 8th and 9th centuries introduced another cultural layer to the development of Croatia. One theory has it that the first Croats were tribal Slavs from the Carpathian Mountains in the area bordered by modern Ukraine and Poland. This coincides with stories of a tribal kingdom of the White Croats (Bielo Chorvati) that existed at the foot of the Carpathians near modern Krakow in Poland until it was overwhelmed by other invaders in the 10 th century. This ethnic group persisted into modern times. One source even claimed that the mother of our Polish born Pope, John Paul II (1920 – 2005), stated her race as Bielo Chorvati. In successive waves, the Croatian tribes invaded central Europe, first arriving in the Balkans in the early 7 th century. Similarities in regional languages as well as historical references to early Croats in the Ukraine, Poland, Bohemia and Austria show the paths they took. Assuming the White Croats were the source, the Red Croats were their kin who carried on to present day Croatia and Bosnia. Legend has it that this historical relationship is celebrated in the design of the red and white chequerboard Croatian flag that dates back to mediaeval times. There are also anecdotal references to Black Croats in Bohemia. The colours have nothing to do with skin complexion but most likely based on the ancient pagan Slavs’ way of defining compass points. The statue of the god Svetovid had four faces painted in different colours and aligned to the cardinal points. The northern face was white, the western face was red, the southern face was black and the eastern green. I believe that most of the original Liburnian/Celtic/Illyrian inhabitants stayed in Pannonia and Dalmatia and ultimately integrated with these invading Slavonic tribesmen. Croats are genetically similar to other central Europeans and their DNA distribution implies that the majority are descended from ancient people who have lived in central or eastern Europe since the Stone Age. I once read an internet source suggesting that only about one third of today’s Croats are ethnic Slavs. I think

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that website had a racist agenda but it simply ties in with the known DNA data, implying the Slavs originated in the eastern parts of Europe and mixed with existing inhabitants to form today’s Croats. The very early origins of the Croats are unclear. There are several theories but little hard evidence. I like the story that we are linked to the Sarmatians; warlike Iranian nomads who ravaged much of Eastern Europe and challenged ancient Rome’s rule over its eastern provinces. It is a vague possibility that some Sarmatian warriors mixed with proto-Slavs, adopted their language and formed the ruling class of early Croatian tribes who established themselves in the Carpathian Mountains (The Carpathians stretch across central and eastern Europe from the Czech republic to Serbia). This idea is supported by the existence of two Sarmatian 3rd century stone tablets held in the St Petersburg Archaeological Museum in Russia. Found in the Crimean seaport of Tanais, they refer to Horovathos, Greek for Croat. This evidence is very flimsy and I doubt the possible eastern origins of the Croats will ever be proved.

3rd century Crimean stone inscription referring to “Horovathos” (Croat) Source: http://www.hr/darko/etf/et03.html There is a legend that, in the late 2nd century, a cavalry force of Sarmatian prisoners-of-war was drafted into the Roman army. This unit was posted to Roman Britain to control northern Celtic incursions. The story continues with the assertion that when the Romans left Britain in the early fifth century, the administrative vacuum they left behind was filled by the descendents of these soldiers who formed the nucleus of a feudal warrior class. Sarmatian imagery included dragons, stone altars and swords and a Romanised Sarmatian battle commander carried the honorary title Artorius so it is not too difficult to see why a theory persists that the legendary King Arthur was of Sarmatian descent. I don’t think the Brits would be pleased with the idea that their famous mythical king may have been related to the early Croats! The Samartians in Eastern Europe were to be overwhelmed, in turn, by the Huns and Goths and had faded away as a distinct race by the 6th century. Croatia is at the crossroads of Europe and numerous European tribes have entered the region over the last two millennia, all contributing to its cultural characteristics. This cultural diversity is demonstrated by the Vlach settlers in my ancestral region of the Vinodol. There was a significant influx in the early 1600s escaping the protracted Turkish wars of the time. The Vlachs (Wallachians) were a swarthy, non-Slavic people who spoke a Romance language, possibly descended from Roman soldiers posted to what is now Bulgaria and Romania. They were nomadic herders who tended to adopt the culture and religion of the dominant race of their area. Even today, there is a very small ethnic group living near Rijeka describing

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themselves as Istro-Romanians. I am not sure if these people are descended from the above-mentioned Vlach settlers or from an earlier tribal group. In the Vinodol, the Vlachs were recognised as good warriors and experts with livestock. They were welcomed by the local authorities and given some special privileges. One writer claims that the Vlach settlers in the Vinodol were accorded the title of “Croats” upon their conversion to Catholicism in the 1630s.

Vlachs Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_language The Croatian invasion As I previously suggested, Croatian tribes invaded the former Roman provinces of Dalmatia and Pannonia in the early 7 th century. According to ancient Croatian legend, the first Croats to enter the new lands were led by siblings: five brothers; Klukas, Lobel, Kosijanac, Muhlo and Hrvat and two sisters Tuga and Buga.

Oton Iveković (1869 – 1939): Dolazak Hrvata na Jadran. (The Croats' arrival at the Adriatic Sea)

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Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Croatia Constantine VII, the 10th century Byzantine Emperor and historian reported that the Croats and Serbs were encouraged to enter the Balkans by the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius (610 – 641) as a buffer against Avar tribes and others who were threatening the eastern empire. This is probably a contemporary oversimplification. I am sure Croats would like to believe that they were welcomed into the Balkans but it is more likely that they were brutal pagan invaders who fought for the Avars as much as against them and there are several historical stories of Croats aiding the Avars in attacking and overwhelming Byzantine settlements. Christian Croats Eventually the Croatian tribes settled down under Byzantine rule, mixed with the local indigenous inhabitants and adopted Christianity. This state of affairs persisted well into the 8th century when Byzantine influence over the Croat tribes waned. The Frankish king, Charlemagne the Great (742-814), crushed the Avars and drove them back in to present day Hungary late in the 8th century and, in the year 800, he re-established Rome as the seat of the western Christian church. The Croats quickly accepted the sovereignty of the Franks, which was probably a good choice given the alternate option of annihilation, and embraced the Roman Church rites. By the early 9th century, most Croats were what we now know as Roman Catholics. Christianity and the Catholic faith were significant influences in Croatian history. It is believed that in the late 800s, the Roman Popes, Adrian II and his successor John VIII, allowed the Slav speaking Byzantine bishops (later saints) Cyril and Methodius to say mass for Croats in Slavonic. At that time the relationship between the eastern and western branches of the church was cordial and this event is quite plausible. There is certainly evidence that many Croatian bishoprics were authorised to conduct the Catholic rites both in spoken and written (Glagolitic) Croatian by the mid 1200s. Throughout their history, Croats often delivered the mass in their Slavonic language sometimes in defiance of later Papal demands to use Latin. It wasn’t until the great Ecumenical Council in the 1960s that all other Catholic nations were allowed to deliver the mass in their native languages! Pope Joan Legends persist about a Pope John (Johannas Anglicus), who was actually an English (in some versions, German) female impersonating a man, existing around the same time as the abovementioned Byzantine bishops. Nicknamed Pope Joan, she is alleged to have held the office for a couple of years but came to a violent end after giving birth during a Papal procession in Rome! The Papacy in that era was often decadent and corrupt and due to sketchy historical records and the Catholic Church’s denial of her existence and reluctance to pursue it, her existence will probably never be proved. But it seemed like fun to mention her in this story. Serbia Serbian tribes are thought to have entered the Balkans at about the same time as the Croats, although I found one reference to a Slavic tribe in what is now Serbia at the start of the 6 th century, so they may have arrived earlier. In many ways their early history complements our own and some Serbs also believe that they are descended from Sarmatians that mixed with early eastern Slavs. The Serbs were Christianised at about the same time as the Croats, although they remained under Byzantine influence for much longer and retained the Byzantine church rites, now Orthodox Christianity. An independent Serbian kingdom (known as Rashka) had developed by the 13th century. In the reign of King Stefan Dušan (1331-55), Serbia was a powerful, independent Balkan state with dominions stretching into modern day Greece. Defeat at the battle of Kosovo Polje (Kosovo Field) in 1389 brought them under Turkish domination until the late 19 th century. Modern Kosovo, now largely occupied by Islamic Albanians, featured in the strife and atrocities between Serbs and Albanians in the late 1990’s. An event that had a profound effect on the Croats and their Balkan neighbours was the Great Schism of 1054, when the eastern, Orthodox Christian Church split completely from the west. Croats remained Catholic but the Serbs followed the Orthodox faith.

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Before and during the Yugoslav era there was a push, particularly by Serbian leaders, to define the Serbs and Croats as one people. They certainly share Slavic origins and in modern times they share a similar language and culture, although that is largely due to a common “Yugoslav” identity imposed between 1920 and 1990. I don’t believe that Croats and Serbs are that closely related and I think we could claim similar kinship to other Slavs like the Czechs, Slovaks, Poles and Slovenians. Croats and Serbs occupied distinctly separate regions in the Balkans throughout recorded history, used different written alphabets and followed different religions for more than a thousand years. Croatia historically identifies with central and western Europe where Serbia tends to follow the east. This is largely influenced by their religion, which is directly related to Russian and Greek Orthodox Christianity. Also, Serbia’s five centuries of subjugation by the Islamic Turks has developed in them a unique Serbian national psyche. They are a fiercely proud people with a tough and uncompromising spirit. Unified Croatia Between the 7th and 9th centuries, Croatia consisted of loosely connected but independent tribal groups operating at different times under Byzantine, Frankish and Venetian influence. Tomislav (died 928) became the first known ruler of a unified Croatia, first as a Duke from 910 and as King from about 924.

Oton Iveković (1869 – 1939): Krunidba kralja Tomislava. (The crowning of King Tomislav) Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomislav_I_of_Croatia This independent Croatian kingdom persisted until King Zvonimir died in about 1090 without an heir. Petar Svačić claimed the crown between 1093 and 1097 but civil war erupted and his defeat by a coalition of Croatian and Hungarian noblemen supporting Zvonimir’s Hungarian Brother-in-law put an end to a pure Croatian monarchy.

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A Croatian soldier of the 11th Century Source: http://pubwww.srce.hr/husar/ After much violence and intrigue, the Croatian crown was eventually amalgamated with Hungary in about 1102 under the Hungarian king Coloman. Croatia was never assimilated into Hungary. It became an autonomous, feudal kingdom with its own Parliament (Sabor) and Viceroy (Ban) and remained in this role of a semi-autonomous state within other states for nearly 900 years until the recent civil war with Yugoslavia when it finally regained its independent sovereignty. The earliest known map of Croatia is in the European map of 1154 drawn by the Arabic geographer Al–Idrisi who spent many years in the employment of Roger II, Norman king of Sicily and southern Italy from 1130 to 1154. Croatia is identified clearly in Arabic as Bilad Garuasia (land of Croatia). In the following map, I’m pretty sure that al buna is Pula, la’ari is Lovran, sena is Senj, and the islands arba and bage are Rab and Pag respectively. It is possible that luber is Novi (Lopar) and lunab is Ledenice but that is more guesswork than fact.

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Portion of the northern Croatian coastline drawn by Al-Idrisi AD1154 (note that this is shown north down) and re-aligned with a modern Croatian coastal map. Sources: http://www.croatianhistory.net/etf/lat.html http://www.find-croatia.com/kvarner/map-kvarner.html Within a few years of Croatia being absorbed into the Hungarian empire, Venice tried to wrest control of coastal Croatia and Dalmatia. Occupied by Croatian people from one of the earliest migrations, Dalmatia is a strip of land along the Adriatic Sea running from near the town of Senj, south, to Dubrovnik. It was a valuable maritime resource and Hungary and Venice fought numerous wars over the region for the next 300 years. Eventually, most of Dalmatia was sold to Venice in a dubious political settlement and remained in Venetian hands from the early 1400’s until the late 1700’s when much of it was taken over again by Austria. An insight into the politics and intrigues of those times is encapsulated in one event. The Fourth Crusade against Islam never actually got to the Holy Land, its proponents being content to wreak havoc in the Balkans instead. To repay campaign debts to Venice, the crusading Catholic knights sacked the Catholic Dalmatian city of Zadar in 1202. Two years later the same Crusaders attacked and viciously looted Constantinople, the seat of the eastern Christian Church, another event that widened the rift between Orthodox and Catholic Christians and ironically weakened the Byzantines such that it ultimately allowed Islam to enter the Balkans a few generations later. The Crusade established Venetian influence in the region for generations. Strife with Venice continued over the centuries. Our ancestral town, Novi Vinodol was almost destroyed by the Venetians in the early 17th century. Croats have had a love-hate relationship with Italy for a millennium. There were Croatian-speaking enclaves existing in Italy from Venetian to modern times, and many Italian words appear in the dialects of Croats living along the coast. One story even claims that the great Venetian explorer, Marco Polo (1254-1324), was a Croat, a member of a family (Pilich) that had migrated to Venice from central Dalmatia. The Mongol hordes Croatia, along with most of central Europe, was devastated by the Mongol hordes in 1241-42. The Mongols (Tartars) under Ghengis Khan began attacking the eastern edges of Europe in the 1220s. After the death of Ghengis in 1227 his grandson Batu brutalised and conquered most of Russia by 1240. The Russian principalities were to remain Mongol vassals for the next two centuries. In 1241 Batu attacked central Europe. In almost every battle, the Christian armies were destroyed and much of Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Austria and the Balkans were laid waste by Batu Khan. The Mongols overran Zagreb and swept through Dalmatia but were unable to take the Vinodol. The death and destruction dealt out by the Mongols equalled an epidemic of the black plague. The Tartars withdrew suddenly in 1242, probably because of a power struggle within the ruling Mongol hierarchy at home. Although, in their ancient legends, the Polish people claim that their heroism in battle drove away the Mongols!

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The Turkish Wars Although the Western Roman Empire had disintegrated by the end of the 5 th century, the Eastern Byzantine Empire persisted, at least in parts, until the Muslim Turks (Ottomans) finally conquered it completely in the 1400’s. Turkish Istanbul was formerly Byzantine Constantinople. The Turks began attacking and occupying parts of Croatia from the 1400’s, having previously absorbed Serbia into the Turkish Empire in 1389. They brutally sacked and annexed much of the region after first destroying the cream of Croatian nobility at the battle of Krbava in 1493 and later a Croatian-Hungarian army at the battle of Mohacs in 1526. The Turkish victories were assisted by the fact that the Croats and Hungarians spent much of their energies warring among themselves. Most of Hungary was overwhelmed by the Turks in 1541 and what was left of Croatia fell under Austrian Habsburg control. The Habsburgs established a military frontier (Vojna Krajina) near the present day Croatian-Bosnian border. Serbs and Vlachs, fleeing the Turks, established settlements and provided troops for the border garrisons. These Serb enclaves persisted in Croatia until many of their descendents fled during the recent War of Partition between Croatia and Yugoslavia (1991-1995). In 1566, Nikola Subich-Zrinski (Zrinyi in Hungarian), a Croatian nobleman with family ties to the Vinodol, led a heroic, but suicidal, battle with the Turks at Szigetvar (near the present Croatian-Hungarian border). With about 2,500 Croatian and Hungarian soldiers he confronted a force of 90,000 Turks intent on attacking Vienna. He and his soldiers were wiped out but their action saved Vienna. This story is fascinating in several ways. Legend has it that, prior to the final attack, the Croatian and Hungarian women of Szigetvar chose to be killed by their men rather than face a life of slavery in the hands of the Turks. The Croat soldiers are reputed to have removed their armour in their final charge to allow them to fight more freely (and die more quickly). Another twist is that the Turkish Sultan is believed to have died days before the final battle and his death was concealed from his troops so that they would continue to fight. Apparently his body was sat in a chair overlooking the battlefield to give the impression he was still in charge! The Turks eventually abandoned the expedition and returned to Constantinople.

Johann Peter Krafft (1825): Zrínyi's Charge from the Fortress of Szigetvár Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Szigetv%C3%A1r xii

Conflict between the Austrian Empire and the Turks persisted into the 19 th century but the last great assault by the Ottomans on Austria concluded in 1683 when an allied army, led by Polish cavalry, defeated a huge Turkish force that had laid siege to Vienna. There is a story that Vienna’s famous coffee house culture started at this time with coffee supplies abandoned by the retreating Turks. After more wars, punctuated by deceit and political intrigue (often detrimental to the Croats who were probably seen as a threat almost equal to the Turks by the Viennese Habsburgs), the Turkish threat to Croatia (as we know it today) abated by the end of the 17th century. Many other parts of the Balkans did not escape Turkish occupation for another 200 years. An interesting historical incident occurred in 1573 when Matija Gubec led a peasant rebellion against the Croatian noble classes as a result of their profiteering due to the strife with the Turks. The revolt was crushed and its supporters brutally executed. We may have had a completely different Balkan situation today if the uprising was successful. Croats bore the brunt of the Turkish attempts to invade Europe for hundreds of years and helped prevent Islamic penetration into Western Europe. In 1519 the Medici Pope, Leo X, described Croatia as Antemurale Christianitatis, the Bulwark of Christianity. Islamic Slavs During the 400 years of Turkish occupation of the southern Balkans, many Slavs and Albanians converted to Islam. Christians under Turkish administration were denied many of the privileges of Islamic subjects and the converts were probably motivated by the practicalities of life rather than religious conviction. Stories persist of some Bosnian families practicing the Islamic rites publicly but maintaining their Christian faith privately for generations after their “conversion”. I met a man of Macedonian descent in Turkey in 2010. He still spoke his native language yet his family had been Turks for generations. He told me that his ancestors were originally Christians but were converted to Islam by force. He gave me the feeling he wasn’t a very devout Muslim. I surmise that when the Ottomans withdrew from Macedonia his family followed them. Parts of Bosnia and Serbia are Islamic to this day, another issue contributing to the strife that plagues the Balkans. The Turks had a curious and cruel custom; the “devsirme”. They kidnapped Slav boys from areas under their control, forcibly converted them to Islam and trained them in military and administrative skills. The most successful often became high-ranking officials, the remainder drafted into an elite infantry corps called the Janissaries. In Turkish “yeni” means new and “ceri” soldiers. These Christian born Janissaries were “shock troops” often used to fight the Christian armies of the Austrians, Hungarians and Croats with deadly effect. Their influence on the Croatian consciousness must have been enormous as I remember my father talking about them, and that was over 300 years after their attacks on our people! I have also heard old Dalmatian tales of parents deliberately maiming their sons so they would not be taken. Even today, calling someone a Janissary is a particularly nasty Slav insult. The Janissaries came to a sticky end in 1826. On learning of the formation of new, westernised army units, the Janissaries revolted. When they refused to surrender, Sultan Mahmud II, had cannon fire directed on their barracks. Most of the Janissaries were killed in this attack, and those who were taken prisoner were executed, thus ending 400 years of military tradition.

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Janissary Source: From a 16th century painting: http://muze.sabanciuniv.edu/exhibition/ There are many Turks with European skin colouring and facial features, obviously descendents of slaves and others from subjugated European countries. Some years ago, a member of our extended family, Graeme Andrews, assisted some Turkish immigrants involved in a boating mishap in NSW. Graeme was impressed by the fact that the young Turkish woman was almost the spitting image of his wife Winsome (nee Dobric – my mother’s sister) as a young woman. His observations are not surprising. The Turks attacked our ancestral town of Novi Vinodol in the 1500s and more than half of its inhabitants were captured and taken away into slavery. That Turkish girl may have been our relative! To add to this, I was a little miffed when I was mistaken for a Turk by the locals on two occasions on our trip to Turkey in 2010. I pointed out to them that I didn’t look like a Turk but they looked like me. Unfortunately, I think the sarcasm was lost in translation! It is sometimes assumed that slavery in Europe was confined to ancient times, but in fact it was commonplace until relatively recently. Black slaves were kept in England up until the start of the 19 th century. In earlier times the Slav races were regularly targeted, first by German and later by Turkish slavers and captives exported all over Europe and the Middle East. The practice was so common that Slavs provided the root of the modern English word slave, supplanting the old English word weallas (Welshman). Incidentally, I read that in 1100 AD, the largest slave market in Western Europe was in Dublin (ruled by the Vikings at that time), an historical fact that the Irish would probably prefer to be quietly forgotten. Another little known fact is that some Croats were among the first Europeans to prohibit slavery, decreed in the Statute of Korčula in 1214 AD. Austria - Hungary Although notionally autonomous for most of its history, Croatia remained uncomfortably (and sometimes brutally) under Austro-Hungarian domination until the end of the Great War of 1914 – 1918. The only exception was from about 1805 to 1813 when parts of Slovenia, Croatia and Dalmatia were ceded to France during the Napoleonic domination of Europe. Napoleon turned the Croat lands into the French republican provinces of Illyria.

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French Empire and Illyrian Provinces. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illyrian_Provinces The Illyrian provinces collapsed with the defeat of Napoleon, and the territories returned to Austria in 1815. However, membership of the short-lived Illyrian Republican Provinces was the Croats' first experience of modern statehood and an inspiration for Illyrianism, a Croatian intellectual movement of the 1830s which promoted a cultural and national revival, and stressed the solidarity of the Southern Slav peoples. This movement pushed to re-unite Dalmatia and Croatia but an agreement between the Hungarians and Austrians restructured the Austrian Empire as the dualistic state of Austria–Hungary in 1867. Brought about by the uprising and civil war in Hungary in 1848-49 between Croats, Hungarians and other national groups, “dualism” effectively prevented unification of Croat lands. Dalmatia and Istria were controlled by the Austrian part of the Monarchy and Croatia proper by the Hungarian part. This arrangement remained in place until the disintegration of Austria–Hungary in 1918. As a child, I never understood the friction that occasionally existed between some Croats and Dalmatians living in Australia. It is only since researching their history did I discover the gulf that divided them. For nearly 500 years they were ruled separated and only really came together again in my parent’s lifetime. French – Croatian connections Napoleonic France’s occupation of its Illyrian provinces influenced political thought in Croatia and the French were probably welcomed in some quarters. They built roads and other infrastructure and introduced a French education system. Napoleon even had a personal escort of Croatian troops, many of whom died defending him in his Russian campaign. A monument in the French Military Museum in Paris even celebrates these soldiers’ heroism.

French plaque (To the memory of Croatian regiments that under the French flag have shared the glory of the French Army) Source: http://www.croatianhistory.net/etf/cravate.html

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Napoleon was reported to have said “I never had more courageous and better soldiers”. It is interesting to note that many of the Croat soldiers who fought so bravely for Napoleon in Russia had only a few years previously fought equally bravely against him as part of the Austrian army in the Franco-Austrian wars. Similarly as the French Empire disintegrated, Croatian soldiers deserted Napoleon in droves and happily joined the other side. Lieutenant-Colonel R. L. Robertson, Commander of the British military garrison on the Adriatic island of Vis wrote to his superiors in March 1813: “My Lord, Eight Croatians in the French Service having deserted to us from Lessina (Hvar) I have ventured to enlist them into the Corsican Rangers, as they were very desirous to do so, and without any bounty. They are uncommonly handsome young men, and were forced into the French Service - They are the first Croatians that have deserted to us, but believe more will speedily follow their example, may I request to know if Your Lordship will approve of my entering them into our Service.” The cravat It is generally believed that the man’s necktie originated in Croatia. Croatian soldiers served as mercenaries throughout Europe from early times. Louis XIV of France created a Croatian cavalry regiment, the Royale-Cravate, that persisted from 1664 to 1789 and the neckwear worn by these Croatian troops became popular with the French king and, ultimately, the rest of Europe. The word cravat is a derivation of Hrvat (Croat).

1622 portrait of Dubrovnik poet, Ivan Dživo Gundulič, wearing a cravat Source: http://academia-cravatica.hr/cravat/ Yugoslav Croatia At the end of the Great War of 1914 – 1918 (WW1) most of Croatia, Dalmatia and Slovenia (dominions of Austria-Hungary and thus on the losing side) were placed under Serbian control by the victorious allied forces. The exceptions were Croatian Istria and Dalmatian Zadar, which were held by Italy until its capitulation in the World War (WW2) of 1939-1945. In the Great War, Serbia was supported by the Allies. The specific event that precipitated the Great War was the killing of the Austrian Habsburg, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, by a Montenegrin/Serb assassin in 1914, resulting in Austria declaring war on Serbia. The rest of that story is world history.

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It is interesting to note that the Croatian city of Rijeka (Italian Fiume), located at the northern end of our region of the Vinodol, held the status of a free city (semi-autonomous state and trading zone) through much of its history. It briefly reverted to this status between 1919 and 1920 as a rogue city-state controlled by demobilised Italian veterans, led by an eccentric anarchist-fascist Gabriele D'Annunzio. The actions of the self-styled Republic of Fiume consisted mostly of looting, decadence and piracy of local waters. The result was the twenty-five day long Italio-Fiume War of 1920 where Fiume was attacked and taken over by Italy and remained under Italian control until 1947. I vaguely remember family stories of cross-border smuggling in this interwar period. This is unsurprising given that the border was only about 30 kilometres from Novi. The Kingdom of SHS (Serbia, Hrvatska (Croatia], Slovenia) was created in December 1918 under the Serbian King, Peter Karadjordjevic. The name Yugoslavia (Southern Slavs) was in common use from the start and internationally recognised in 1929. Around this time, Croatia was re-united with Dalmatia and parts of Bosnia as an autonomous region within Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia was an unhappy union of Slavs from the start. The leader of the Croat Peasant Party, Stjepan Radić, was murdered in the Parliament by a Serbian agent, after which King Alexander (son of Peter) established a royal dictatorship. In 1934, Alexander, himself, was assassinated by a Croat while on tour in France. The Serb Royal Family rose from humble beginnings. The Kingdom of Serbia was only proclaimed in 1882. King Peter was the grandson of a wealthy warlord and pig merchant, Karadjordje (Black George) who had led a heroic Serbian uprising against their Turkish masters in 1804. Karadjordje was later murdered and beheaded by a member of a rival Serb family who had conspired with the Turkish Sultan. The World War of 1939-1945 With the invasion of Yugoslavia by the Axis powers (Germany, Austria and Italy) in the World War (WW2), and the resulting collapse of the Royal Yugoslav government, the Fascist Independent State of Croatia (NDH - Nezavisna Država Hrvatska) was proclaimed in Zagreb in April 1941 with support from the Axis invaders. Led by Ante Pavelić, its soldiers and agents were known as the Ustaši (pronounced oo-sta-shi and literally translated as Rebels). A similar pro-Nazi puppet administration formed in Serbia under General Nedić and other Balkan countries followed suit. All supported the Axis powers and their soldiers often fought under German command, particularly on the Eastern Front. The Croat, Josip Broz (Tito), formed the Communist Yugoslav Partisans to fight the Germans and Italians. A large number of Croats rejected the puppet Ustaši regime and joined Tito. A lot of the racist social media on the internet tries to demonise Croatians because of the atrocious behaviour of elements of the Ustaši during WW2 but they neglect to mention that per capita Croatia provided more Partisans than Serbia, Montenegro, Slovenia and Macedonia combined and that Tito, the founder of the Partisans and post-war Yugoslavia, was a Croat! For a while, an irregular force of Serb nationalists also opposed the invaders with military support from the Allies (led by Britain at the start of the war). These soldiers were known as the Četniks (pronounced chetniks). Wartime politics in Yugoslavia were brutal and confused. A bitter civil war erupted between the Partisans, Četniks and Ustaši. The Allies initially ignored Tito’s Communist Partisans and supported the Četniks in their fight against Axis forces but later dropped the Četniks and supported Tito. The Četniks went on to support Hitler against the Partisans and tens of thousands of Ustaši soldiers of the conscripted Croatian Home Guard (Hrvatsko domobranstvo) defected to the Partisans between 1943 and late 1944. In my estimation, the choice of who someone fought for was influenced more by where they lived rather than political conviction. Around Zagreb and Slavonia the Ustaši were dominant but Tito’s Partisans were active in coastal Croatia and Bosnia and Serbia. The Četniks operated within Serbian enclaves.

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During this conflict, all sides committed terrible atrocities. The Ustaši operated a concentration camp at Jasenovac about 100 km southeast of Zagreb and murdered many thousands of Serbs, Partisan Croats and Roma. At the end of the war the Yugoslav Partisans, with tacit British support, committed a final atrocity on the defeated Ustaši in an event known as the Bleiburg Massacre. These terrible events were re-visited in the ethnic and political strife of the 1990s. Members of my (ex) wife’s family were Partisans along with many others from their village of Zaton in Dalmatia and they suffered terribly at the hands of both the occupying Italians and their Četnik supporters. My relatives in Novi also suffered under the occupation and most of them were Partisan fighters or supporters. My own great-grandmother Lucija Dobrić at the age of 80 smuggled food to them and Mum’s cousin (Dragutin Dobrić, grandson of Lucija) was an officer in the Partisan army. With the aid of the Western allies, the communists took power in 1945 and formed the Socialist Federated Republic of Yugoslavia with Tito as President. Croatia became one of Yugoslavia’s six republics. Independent Croatia Yugoslavia was plagued by nationalist tensions even during Tito’s era and upon his death in 1980, the Federation began to crumble. Flash point was reached in 1991 when Slovenia seceded and Croatia, led by Franjo Tudjman, followed. Croatia was plunged into yet another bitter civil war lasting several years and in which up to 15,000 Croats are thought to have died. Much of Croatia was attacked and occupied by Serbian forces until the United Nations and NATO intervened. The term ethnic cleansing, the expulsion of minority groups from a region, is a product of this conflict. Again terrible atrocities were committed (often by Serbian irregular forces on Croat civilians) and the scars of that conflict will take a long time to fade. I read an amusing, if not a little ironic, comment on a Croatian tourist website promoting the place as a safe, low crime destination with the words: “We leave the corruption to the politicians and the homicide until wartime”. By January 1998, Croatia regained most of its lost territory. Tudjman died in 1999 and on 18 February 2000, the newly elected President, Stjepan Mesić, was sworn in with the stated aims of democratic reform and integration of Croatia into Western Europe. At the time of writing Croatia is working towards joining the European Union.

Croatia through the ages

Around 800 AD: Croat and Serb tribes were well established in the Balkans. The Croats were under the influence of the Franks but Serbia remained with the Byzantines.

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Around 1000AD: Croatia was an independent kingdom

Around 1300AD: Croatia was an autonomous state under a Hungarian king. Serbia had become a powerful kingdom controlling much of the southern Balkans

Around 1550 AD: Dalmatia was under Venice and the rest of Croatia was under Austria. The Ottoman Turks had conquered most of the Balkans and made inroads into Croatian territory. The Turks did not completely leave the region until the early 1900s.

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2000 AD: Once again, Croatia is a sovereign European state.

The Croatian language and alphabet

The Croatian language is one of a number of related Slavonic languages spoken in central, eastern and south-eastern Europe. There are three major dialects in Croatian, with variations often existing between adjacent towns and villages. These dialects date back to the earliest Croatian migrations and identify three distinct waves of invading Croats. Croatian as an independent language has been under attack from outside forces for tens of generations. Not only was the language officially suppressed by Austria and Hungary from early times but in the 19th century and again in the Yugoslav era there were concerted efforts to unify Croatian and Serbian into a common language. The first known official attempt to implement changes in 1850 was vigorously encouraged by Viennese bureaucrats because it simplified dealings with their Croatian and Serbian subjects. Incidentally, Ivan (later Ban) Mažuranić of Novi was one of the scholars that signed off on those agreed changes. Between 1920 and 1991, Croatia was part of Serbian dominated Yugoslavia and further attempts were made (largely by Serbian scholars) in 1954 to erase Croatian language “peculiarities”. In this era, the regional Croatian dialects were further diminished. For example, the Novljanski (Novi) dialect spoken by my grandparents and preserved for many years by their relative isolation in Australia was quite different to that spoken by young people in Novi today. Dialects The three major Croatian dialects are named after the word for “what” in each. The što (pronounced shto) dialect is the most common and is used over much of Croatia and Bosnia with versions appearing in Serbia as well. The kaj (kay) dialect appears in the north in Slovenia and around Zagreb and the ča (cha) dialect is used around Novi Vinodol and some Adriatic islands.

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These dialects have sub-divisions, identified by the use of the vowel sound i, e or ije (pronounced ye). The word for nice in Novi and parts of Dalmatia is lipo in some regions it is lijepo and others, with Serbian influence, lepo. The ča, or Chakavian dialect using i, or Ikavian vowels is one of the earliest Croatian languages and was the dialect spoken by my ancestors in Novi and surrounds. With the passage of time, the kaj and ča dialects are expected to disappear in Croatia except as academic curiosities. The Bosnian/Herzegovian što dialect with the ije subset is the agreed national language and is officially encouraged throughout Croatia. Historical written Croatian The Croatian language was suppressed in official circles for centuries with the Austrians and Hungarians trying to impose German or Hungarian (Magyar) respectively from time to time as the official language of the region. To avoid being taken over by these languages, Croatian leaders retained Latin as their official administrative language up to the mid-19th century. In earlier times, certainly until the end of the 16th century, many documents and engravings were written in Croatian using the ancient Glagolitic, a unique Slavonic script with no modern equivalent. It was apparently based on an ancient Greek script and its development is credited to Saint Cyril whose name, ironically, is given to the Cyrillic script used by the Serbs. A good example of Glagolitic appears on the 11th century Baška Tablet found on the island of Krk near Novi Vinodolski.

The historic 11th century Baška Tablet Source: http://www.hr/darko/etf/et03.html In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Catholic Church in many parts of Croatia (including Novi) kept its records in Croatian, but written in a Latin/Germanic script similar to that used in modern English. For example, my family name Piškulić was written as Piskulich until the mid 1800s. In some regions of Dalmatia under Venetian control, Italian was the official church language and it appears that early Croatian churches in some border regions also used the Serbian Cyrillic script.

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The Croatian alphabet A unique Croatian alphabet, based on the Latin script, was developed in the 1830’s by French educated Croatian leaders and after many difficulties and some violent incidents, Croatian, using this script, became the language of officialdom by the late 1860’s. The Croatian alphabet is phonetic. There is a letter to match each sound used in the language. This makes learning to read and write relatively easy. My grandparents only received three or four years of education but they could all read and write in their native language. The alphabet consists of 30 letters, some using diacritic marks to indicate special sounds. There is no th or w sound in Croatian. Also, the letters q, x and y are absent. In most other cases, the sounds are similar to English. The alphabet and its sounds follow with upper and lower cases shown. I have made notes alongside sounds that are substantially different to English. A-a, as in the Australian bath B-b C-c, a ‘ts’ sound as in rats Ć-ć, a ‘ty’ sound as in the Australian tune. My family name ends in ć Č-č, as in rich D-d Dž-dž, a softer sound than the English j in John Đ-đ, approximates the English j in John. I often received cards addressed to Đon! E-e, similar to the English e in bed F-f G-g H-h I-i, similar to English i in bid J-j, a ‘y’ sound as in young K-k L-l Lj-lj, an ‘ly’ sound close to the Australian brilliant M-m N-n Nj-nj, an ‘ny’ sound close to onion O-o, a sound close to the English ‘aw’ in shawl P-p R-r, rolled like the Scottish. Often used as a vowel, as in the family name Mrša S-s Š- š, as in English ‘sh’ T-t U-u, similar to the Australian ‘u’ in pull V-v Z-z Ž-ž, a soft ‘z’ as in Australian treasure Grammar and spelling Croatian spelling is easy for a foreigner to understand, but the grammar is another story. The articles a, an and the are absent in the language so conveying ideas such as the child and a child etc. require some verbal gymnastics for a nonnative speaker (like myself) without a good understanding of the complex grammatical cases employed by the language.

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Adjectives and nouns change their form depending on their function or case in a sentence. That caused me a lot of discomfort when travelling in Croatia and trying to speak with the locals! There is also a sense of formality when addressing and speaking with others that is not easily understood by Australians. “You” has two forms, the formal “vi” for strangers and the informal “ti” for friends, relatives and children. If I asked a friend “how are you?” it would be “kako si?” from the informal ti si (you are). An unfamiliar person would be asked “kako ste?” from the formal vi ste, and so on. A few useful expressions Da; Ne; Dobro; Slabo; Kako si/ste?; Ni je loše; Molim; Hvala; Izvinite;

Yes. No. Good. Poorly How are you? Not bad. Please. Thankyou. Excuse me.

Zbogom; Dobro jutro; Dobar dan; Dobro veče; Laku noč; Sve najbolje!; Dovidjenja!: Žao mi je; Boli mi …;

Goodbye. Good morning. Good day. Good evening. Good (lit. easy) night All the best! See you (later)! I’m sorry. My … hurts

Novi Vinodol/ski

Novi Vinodolski – Town arms My ancestral town, Novi Vinodolski (Novi) is located on the Adriatic coast at the southern end of the Vinodol region. Today it is a popular tourist centre with several large hotels and other good facilities. The words Novljanski, Novljani, Novljanac and Novljanka refer to Novi, its people and its individual men and women respectively. To give some idea of Novi’s location with respect to the rest of Europe, it is only about 90 kilometres from Trieste in northern Italy and about 130 kilometres from Austria.

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Novi (Stari Grad to the left) viewed from “Kalvarija” Photograph by John Paskulich 2000

Novi (Stari Grad to the left) viewed from harbour Photograph by John Paskulich 2010 The Vinodol The Vinodol is in the region known as Hrvatsko Primorje (Coastal Croatia). It is a narrow strip of land about 25 kilometres long and a kilometre or two wide between the coast and the nearby Kapela mountain range extending south from the city of

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Rijeka. The title Vinodol is derived from the ancient Roman name of Vallis Vineris and loosely translates as Valley of Vines attesting to its long history as a winemaking region. For the record, Hrvatsko Primorje is not in Dalmatian territory, as had been suggested to me occasionally by some inland Croats. All through its history our region has been part of Croatia proper, although it shares the same coastline with Dalmatia which starts about 20km away to the south east. Croats began settling in the Vinodol during the 8 th century, often occupying and strengthening abandoned Roman forts for protection. The Lopar ruins at the eastern end of Novi are believed to be the site of one of these forts. By mediaeval times the Vinodol was protected by a network of castles, each with visual communications to the next. The fortified towns that developed from these castles were Trsat, Grobnik, Bakar, Hreljin, Drivenik, Grižane, Bribir, Ledenice and Novi.

Lopar ruins-Novi (Photograph John Paskulich 2010) and artist’s impression of its layout (Source: www.novi-vinodolski.com/Croatian/History.htm)

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The Vinodol region suffered many times in its history. Few records are available from the times of the attacks of the Mongol hordes but, local legend claims that, in the winter of 1241-42, Croatian soldiers at Grobničko Polje (Grobnik Field) at the northern entrance to the Vinodol successfully repelled a Mongol army attempting to invade the valley. There is scant historical evidence of this battle so it may have only been a minor incursion. Even so, it would have been a rare success for a Western army pitted against the Mongols. Due to its strategic location, Grobnik appeared again in the history of the Vinodol. The traditional Morci (Moors head) earrings, pendants and brooches popular among women of the region until the early 20 th century are reputed to celebrate a victory over the Turks who attacked at Grobnik in the late 16th century. On a family note, my mother was given a pair of those earrings as a small child. When she realised that they depicted decapitated black heads with turbans she refused to wear them! Obviously no one took the time to acquaint her with the tradition and glorious history they represented!

Typical Morci design Photograph by John Paskulich 2010 Counts of Krk and the Frankopans Only a few kilometres offshore, in the Adriatic Sea, lies Otok (Island) Krk. At about 40 kilometres long, it is one of the Adriatic’s largest islands. The island’s impregnable nature and its links to the ancient Roman Empire allowed the early development of a feudal aristocratic family group commonly known as the Counts of Krk. History suggests that in 1225 the Hungarian King, Andrij (Andrew) II, officially gave the rights to rule the Vinodol to the Counts of Krk, but in practical terms this family controlled the region anyway. These noblemen later adopted the family name Frankopan. Baška is a settlement in the south of Krk where the historic Baška Tablet was discovered. This stone inscription, in the Glagolitic script, is one of the earliest known Croatian documents written during the reign of King Zvonimir (about 1090). A family ancestor on my Dobrić side, Katarina Umiljenović (1823-1887), was nicknamed “Baba Baška” (Baba means grandmother). It is difficult to say what connection Katarina had with Baška. Her family may have originated from there, but xxvi

given the Novljanski habit of nicknaming people; the contact may be more tenuous. To illustrate this custom, my father sometimes spoke of a “Marija Merikanka” so named because she spent some time in the USA! The Croatian telephone directory shows that there are families of Umiljenović living in the town of Senj, about 20 kilometres south of Novi. Senj is the nearest mainland port to Baška, so there is at least a vague connection. The Frankopans of Krk controlled the Vinodol until about 1450, by which time their power had weakened. Eventually, control of the Vinodol was divided between the Subich-Zrinski family (mentioned previously) and the Frankopans of Tržak (relatives of the Krk noblemen) who administered Novi and its surrounds. The aristocratic Zrinski and Frankopan families were prominent in Croatian history for two centuries to follow. The Turkish invasion of large parts of Croatia during the 1400s triggered a chain of violent events. Concerned that the Hungarians could not stop the Turks, the Vinodol Frankopans started negotiations with both the Austrian Hapsburgs and Venice for protection. The Hungarian king, Mathias Corvinus sent his most brutal general, Blaž the Magyar to subdue the Vinodol in 1469. By 1471 Blaž had annexed most of the Vinodol apart from Novi and a few other ports which were retained by the Frankopans. Enmity between the Frankopans and the Hungarians persisted for generations until most of Hungary was overwhelmed by the Turks in 1541 and the Vinodol region came under Austrian control. The island of Krk was lost to an attack by Venice in 1480 and remained in Venetian hands for several centuries. Novi stayed within the influence of the Hungarian, and later Austrian and Austro-Hungarian, empires until the early 20th century. Australians can’t imagine how close these places are to each other. Krk is so close at one point, that it is now connected to the mainland by a bridge. Yet it was occupied by a hostile foreign power for centuries. The Zrinski-Frankopan rule ended violently in 1671. Ban (Governor) Petar Zrinski and soldier-statesman Fran Krsto Frankopan attempted to raise a rebellion against the Habsburg ruler, King Leopold I, after his treacherous dealings with the Turks against them. Zrinski and Frankopan were lured to Vienna to negotiate but were arrested and, after some time in captivity, cruelly executed by the Austrians on 30th April 1671. The Habsburgs continued to persecute the Zrinski family and destroyed its influence forever. The Frankopans suffered a similar fate and their estates, including the castle in Novi, were confiscated by Vienna. Uskok Pirates of Senj Although not strictly part of the Vinodol, the town of Senj, located about 20 km south of Novi, is an integral part of our history. In the early 16th century, Senj became the haven of Slavs fleeing from the Turks who, unlike their kin in surrounding towns, chose piracy over farming. The Croatian word uskok (pl. uskoci) can be loosely translated as fugitive. The difficult terrain made Senj an ideal pirates’ haven and the Uskoks’ small, fast and manoeuvrable vessels were ideally suited to the narrow island passages of the region. For eighty years the Uskoci preyed on Turkish shipping in the Adriatic with the justification that they only attacked the enemies of Christianity. For this reason they were tolerated (and sometime employed) by both the Venetians and Austrians in the region. Unfortunately, Venice entered into various political and trading arrangements with the Turks in the late16th century and they also became enemies in the eyes of the Uskoci. Over several generations, the pirates developed both outposts and relationships with townspeople along the coast and Vinodol towns, including Novi and Bribir, supported and provided recruits for the pirates. One recorded family name of descendents of the Uskoci was Novlian (from Novi) and one of Novi’s aristocrats at the turn of the 17 th century, Ivan Mazuranich (Mažuranić), a distant ancestor of mine, was from a well known Uskok family. Uskok artefacts and history are on display in the Novi museum and mention is made of traditional Novljanski songs preserving the history of the battles and Uskok heroism.

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To deal with the pirate threat, Venice attacked the region on several occasions. The Venetian Admiral (later Doge) Giovanni Bembo especially targeted Novi in 1598 and 1601 and his successor Marcanton Venier devastated the town in 1615 because of its pirate sympathies. Throughout their history the Uskoci were notionally under Austrian rule. Austria finally concluded a political settlement with Venice in 1617 and betrayed the Uskoci. Under this agreement the Uskok ships were destroyed and many Uskok leaders were executed. Those remaining in Senj were deported to inland regions of Croatia but Uskoci in Novi at this time seemed to have escaped deportation and melted back into the population. I am descended from some of these pirates. After 1617 Senj was repopulated with more compliant subjects thus almost ending Croatia’s pirate history. I picked up one tantalising reference to piracy in the region as late as 1707 but probably not directly associated with these original Uskoci. The Uskok life attracted adventurers from far and wide. The French ambassador to Venice reported in 1618 that “of the Uskoks hanged on 14 August, nine were Englishmen, five of whom were gentlemen and another belonged to one of the noblest families of Britain”. I would dearly like to find out the names of these Englishmen! One fanciful local story is that the Caribbean pirate captain Sir Henry Morgan sought refuge with the Uskoci and lent his name to the village of Mrgani in central Istria. The only problem with this yarn is that Morgan was born some 20 years after the Uskoci were disbanded and exiled and Mrgani isn’t the sort of place that a famous pirate and knight of the British realm would tend to visit. There is a similar old Croatian word (mrgodan) that means dismal or sullen which is more likely a source of the village’s name. With a name like that, I’d be inclined to think up a story about pirates and treasure if I was promoting local tourism!

Ancient engraving of Uskoks engaging Venetian ships (Source unknown)

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Uskok of the early 17th Century Source: http://pubwww.srce.hr/husar/ History of Novi Vinodol Accurate dating of the founding of Novi is impossible. The site has been occupied since pre-Roman times. The first official reference to Novi is in 1163 as a parish under the Split diocese. In 1185 it reappears in the Senj diocese.

Mediaeval Novi: The tower and building in the foreground still exist. Source: http://www.novi-vinodolski.com/ An event in Croatian history that did put the town on the map was the passing of the Vinodol Zakonit (Law Code) in Novi on the Feast of the Epiphany, January 6th 1288. The laws, passed in the presence of Prince Leonid of Krk and Vinodol leaders, codified the relations between the new Counts of Krk and their subjects in the Vinodol towns.

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Artist’s impression of signing of the Vinodol Law Code 6th January 1288 (Novi Museum) Photograph John Paskulich 2004

Copy of the Vinodol Law Code 1288 AD Source: http://www.croatianhistory.net/ The original name of Novi at the time of the Vinodol Law Code was Novi Grad (New Town) probably describing a settlement that grew up adjacent to the old Roman Lopar fort. It was known as Novi Vinodol for centuries but, in 1962, the variation Novi Vinodolski was proclaimed. The original fortified town of Novi, now the suburb of Stari Grad (Old Town), is located at the western end. It is now Novi’s cultural centre, containing the main church, part of the original Frankopan castle and remnants of the town’s fortifications.

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In 1480 King Mathias Corvinus granted Novi free status (probably because he couldn’t defeat it – note my earlier observations about “Blaž the Magyar”). This is significant as it meant the start of changes to the ancient feudal system in the region, although a strong hierarchical system of aristocracy, freemen and villeins persisted well into the 18 th century. In 1493, after the Turks devastated Hungarian and Croatian forces at the Battle of Krbava, the bishopric of Lika was transferred to Novi and Crkva Sveti Filipa i Jakova (the town church of Saints Philip and Jacob) was proclaimed its cathedral. Novi suffered many times in its history. In 1496, the plague struck with such severity that the townspeople temporarily abandoned the town. Legend has it that upon their return the votive church Sv. Fabijana i Sebastijana (Saints Fabian and Sebastian) was built in 24 hours as a vow to God to protect them from the disease again. The church (demolished in the early 1900’s) was built on the site of the present day bell tower located alongside the town church in Stari Grad. The bell tower is a prominent landmark in the district. Bubonic plague (the Black Death) first appeared in Europe in the late 1340’s and spread rapidly across the continent. It raged through Croatia/Dalmatia around 1350 so the Novljani would have been well aware of the devastation it could cause. Turkish raiders attacked and burnt Novi on 27 August 1527 and took away many of its people as slaves. The Turks attacked the area several times and 50 years later they devastated the nearby stronghold of Ledenice, the fortress that protected the southern entrance to the Vinodol.

Artist’s impression of Turkish attack and enslavement of Novi citizens 1527 (Novi Museum) Photograph John Paskulich 2004 In addition to the Turkish menace, Novi was attacked by Venice in 1598, 1601 and 1615 as previously mentioned. In the attack of 29 August 1615 they breached the town walls, slaughtered women and children and almost destroyed the town. The severity of this attack on Novi supports my belief that the Venetians considered Novi to be a significant threat through its association with the Uskok pirates of Senj. The “modern” church records begin in 1650 with only a few dozen entries indicating the extent of the devastation and the time taken to rebuild the community.

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Artist’s impression of Venetian attack on Novi citizens in the town church 1615 (Novi Museum) Photograph John Paskulich 2004 An earthquake struck Novi in 1750 and the town was hit by a hurricane in 1757. Information is scant but the townspeople must have suffered terribly. The earthquake damaged the mediaeval Frankopan castle (the centrepiece of Novi) and the authorities demolished a major part of it a few years later. Today, the remaining part of the castle is still used as a museum and administrative offices. Similarly, the hurricane of 1757 was so intense that the waterfront Pauline monastery was severely damaged. It was abandoned completely a few decades later. Disease was ever present. The town records show that smallpox epidemics in 1734 and 1775 between them killed over 100 children and outbreaks of cholera in 1836 and 1849 killed over 300 hundred people in total. Given that the population of Novi was only around 1100 in 1732 and 2300 in 1844 these losses must have been devastating. The French occupation of Croatia in the early 1800’s left a legacy of public roads, infrastructure and enduring legends in Novi. I have vague memories of my father recounting stories passed down to him about the French some 150 years before. I also uncovered a curious historical incident from this time. In 1812 civil marriages were introduced in Novi, no doubt reflecting French egalitarian ideals, but by the December of 1813 they were abolished. This coincides with the defeat of the French by a European coalition at the Battle of Leipzig in that year.

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Famine struck and the town records show 17 people died of starvation in 1817. 1816 is recorded in history as the Year without a summer and most crops were lost across Europe and North America. This was a result of the volcanic eruption of Mount Tambora (Sumbawa Island Indonesia) in April 1815 which threw up a huge dust cloud that affected sunlight and global temperatures worldwide (very similar to the event believed to have occurred in about 540 AD). Widespread disruption, famine and food riots occurred across Europe over the next couple of years and Novi was particularly hard hit. Novljani were fairly well educated compared to many others in the region. The first school (boys only) opened in 1793. Girls’ classes didn’t start until 1873. Josip Mažuranić (an ancestor from my mother’s side) established the first library in 1845.

View of Novi taken in the late 1800s. The tower of the church of Saints Fabian and Sebastian, demolished around 1900, is still apparent. Source: http://free-ri.t-com.hr/npiskuli/galerija_slika.html From the mid 1800s Novi’s fortunes appeared to improve. A postal service began in 1851 and a steamship line serviced the town from the late 1860s. 1878 is celebrated as the year that Novi became a tourist centre when the Mržlak family established a bathing area and buildings for tourists. Within a few years, inns and other facilities were well established. The imposing Lišanj hotel was completed in 1894 offering a new level of sophistication. The Lišanj hotel is still a tourism icon in Novi. The Vinodol vineyards were effectively wiped out in the late 1800s by blight caused by phylloxera, a tiny sap-sucking insect related to the aphid. This disease had seriously damaged the French wine industry some decades earlier and slowly worked its way across Europe to Croatia. Yet another reason why many Novlani emigrated. Novljani were adventurers and travellers from the start of recorded history but the first big exodus was in the early 1860’s when many men went to work on the Suez Canal project in Egypt. From that time onward we have left our mark all around the world. During the Great War of 1914 –1918, Croats were at the front again, providing huge numbers of soldiers for the AustroHungarian forces. In bitter fighting against the Italians in the alpine regions near Trieste (the Italian Front), hundreds of thousands men died from both sides. My two grandfathers escaped the Great War. Peter was in Australia and Frank in New

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Zealand, but both of my grandmothers were in Novi for the duration. They rarely spoke of the war but from what they did say, it was a miserable and hungry time. In the Second World War (1939-1945), Novi played an important part in the Partisan struggle. It was attacked and occupied by Italian and later, German troops. I visited Novi for my first time in 1976 and clearly remember being deeply moved by a wall of photographs of fallen partisans in the Novi museum bearing mute testimony to that time.

Plaque in Novi Museum honouring Novi's 2nd world war dead Photograph by John Paskulich 2010 Traditions Novi is rich with traditions and has managed to preserve much of its cultural heritage. For generations, the town has conducted the summer festival of Mesopust. Traditional garb is worn and the Novjansko kolo (circle/wheel dance) is performed, supported by traditional folk singing and music. Popular folk musical instruments are the sopile, a long wooden wind instrument and the tamburica a string instrument similar to a mandolin. From early times, part of the Mesopust festival involved parading and burning an effigy of a man that took the blame for the year’s misfortune. This tradition persists to the present day. While on the subject of music, my grandfather, Petar Dobrić, and most of his siblings were accomplished musicians. I heard stories from Petar about how he and his brother Ivan would be hired to play their instruments at local weddings and other events. The pay was usually a few coins and a good meal! Another brother, Božidar was a respected dance-band leader and Božidar’s daughter Adica Dobrić-Jelača was a musical director in Zagreb Radio and at the time of writing still prominent in music and Croatian cultural activities. I had the pleasure of meeting Ivan and Božidar when I travelled to Croatia in the 1970s. I have also met Adica, my mother’s first cousin, several times in my travels. She now lives in Zagreb but still maintains her 15th century family home in Novi.

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Ivan Dobrić-Lukinić (left of picture) and Anton Mažuranić in traditional garb and playing the sopile (ca. 1975). Ivan was my great uncle. .Source: Novi postcard Some people of Novi Novi accepted many immigrants in its history. Although the original Croats began settling the area in the 700’s, it is believed that the Frankopan, and later Austrian rulers, encouraged settlers from many regions. Many families in Novi can trace their history back to particular events (often Turkish or Venetian wars) and other areas of Croatia. Piškulić (Piskulich) I have a distant memory of my father suggesting that our Piškulić ancestors came to Novi from the peninsula of Pelješac, near Dubrovnik at the southern end of Dalmatia. Although Novi is where the name is now most concentrated in Croatia. There is only one telephone directory entry of the name Piškulić in Pelješac today, at a place called Pijavicino but the name was first recorded in that village in the 16th century, adding some support to my Dad’s belief about our origins there. I passed through Pijavicino in 2004. Nowadays it is only a tiny, neglected hamlet consisting of a few houses and a small church. It is interesting to note that there is a smaller but significant concentration of the Piškulić name in Slavonia (inland central Croatia) in the region around the town of Nova Gradiška. It seems that this branch originated in Novi generations ago but moved first to Lika, south of the Vinodol, and then to Slavonia during the World War where they have since established a significant presence. Dobrić (Dobrich) My grandfather, Petar Dobrić maintained that his family were relative newcomers to Novi (only about five centuries ago!) although they appear in the earliest available town records and the original family home dating back to 1493 is still held by a descendant, mum’s first cousin Adica Dobrić-Jelača. We will probably never know their very early origins for sure as Dobrić is a common surname throughout the Balkans, although there are large concentrations of the name in Istria and around Zagreb and Split. Adica maintains that the Dobrić clan came to Novi from Donji Lapac in the Lika region in 1493. Donji Lapac is located close to the Bosnian border (due east of the coastal town of Karlobag). Novljani had a propensity for nicknames and my grandfather’s family were often referred to as Podlapače, suggesting a reference to their origins.

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The Turks occupied the Lika region after they crushed a Hungarian-Croatian army at the great battle at Krbava in 1493. As with many other Novljanski families the Dobrić move to Novi was most likely a consequence of this invasion. During the 1990s war, Donji Lapac and other parts of the Lika region were devastated again, adding credence to my earlier comments about the influence of war on our family history. There is also a village of Dobrić in Serbia located near the eastern Croatian border and Donji Lapac has a Serbian majority, a leftover from the old military frontier against the Turks. It is conceivable that the Dobrić clan originated in Dobrić village and moved westward fleeing the Turks until they eventually ended up in Novi in the late 15 th century. We may have some ancient Serbian blood in us! A town called Dobrich exists in the Dobruja region of Bulgaria but any family connection is highly unlikely as it has only been known by this name since the late 19 th century. It was renamed after a mediaeval hero Dobrotitsa following its liberation from the Ottoman Empire in 1878. The earliest historical record I found of the Dobrić name was Dobrić Dobričević, also known by the Latin translation Bonino Bonini. I think it loosely translates as Goody, son of Goody! Born of an influential family on the Adriatic island of Lastavo near Dubrovnik in around 1454, he was a well known typographer and printer in the Venetian empire. After an interesting life, not only as a printer but also a spy for Venice in France, Dobrić turned his back on printing in the early 1500s and entered the church. He died in 1528 after spending his final years as a deacon of the Cathedral of Treviso. This man was another example of a successful Dalmatian Croat in Italian history. Interestingly, another Novljani name, Sokolić, also appears among the Lastovo elite of the 16th century. Radetić (Radetich) The old church records of Novi show that in about 1710, another ancestor, Ivan Rade, arrived in Novi with his wife (born Margareta Dubrovich) and family from Kastua (Castua/Kastav), a few kilometres west of Rijeka. Their descendents in Novi carried the nickname Kastavac for generations. Even today, the surnames Rade and Dubrović appear in the area around Rijeka. In the early 1700s, Kastav was a Jesuit enclave and also near the Venetian border so the family may have been escaping religious interference or military harassment. Within a few years of arrival in Novi they married into local families, adopted the name Radetich/Radetić and established family lines that persist to the present day. I sometimes wonder about the way surnames develop and also the veracity of the old records. There is a village called Radetići located in central Istria (about 50 km west of Rijeka) populated by families with the surname Radetić and there is a very large concentration of the Radetić surname throughout the Istrian peninsula. Did Rade become Radetić or was it the other way round? Is the name Rade simply a diminutive form or deliberately adopted to avoid identification? Did Ivan originate in Radetići and move to Kastav before coming to Novi? Studying family history can become an obsessive and frustrating pastime! Mažuranić (Mazuranich) The Vinodol region provided heroes, statesmen and academics over the centuries. The Zrinskis and Frankopans have been mentioned previously but another family of note is Mazuranich (Mažuranić). Claiming to have aristocratic, mediaeval, French and Sicilian roots the family is first recorded in the Dalmatian city of Split in the 14 th and 15th centuries and a priest, Juraj, is mentioned in Novi in 1474. The family were early refugees from the Turks and they next appear as Uskoci in Senj and had established connections with Novi in the late16th century (a couple of decades before the demise of the Uskoci). In 1603 Ivan Mazuranich son of the Uskok “Knight” Radoslav was awarded the title "Knez" (Count) by the Frankopan rulers and the family was permitted to build its own fortified house just outside Novi’s town walls. After the Frankopans’ destruction in 1671 by the Austrian Hapsburgs, the Mazuranich family’s importance declined but they kept their landholdings and continued to influence Vinodol and later Croatian history until recent times.

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Ivan Mažuranić (1814-1890) was born in Novi and rose to become the Austro-Hungarian Ban (Viceroy) of Croatia between 1873 and 1880. Although entitled to promote his aristocratic connections, Ivan chose to be identified as the first commoner to be selected as Ban of Croatia. A remarkable man, Ivan formed the Independent National Party which sought a compromise with Vienna to fashion a federal model for Croatia's autonomy within the Empire, but at the same time he was an accomplished scholar and poet. Other members of his family were also noted writers and academics. As mentioned, my direct ancestor, Josip (Ivan’s brother), opened the first library in Novi in the 1840s. Ban Ivan Mažuranić, was my great, great, great, great, great uncle from my maternal grandmother’s side. My very tenuous link with Croatian nobility!

Ivan Mažuranić as a young man (left) and Ban of Croatia Novi family names The modern recorded history of Novi dates back to the mid 1600s. Following are listed most of the names in the town from the early 1700s but using the modern spelling. For clarity, I have placed the early Latinised spelling of a few in brackets. Baran Brnić Brunko Čiković Čikulić Čulinović Dobrić Gabrijelić Ivanović Ivić Jeličić Jezic Kabalin Kargačin Kozarić xxxvii

Krišković Kukalj Liljan Lindarić Lončarić Malabrunić Malčinić Mariašević Maričić Mažuranić Matešić (Mattesich) Mrzljak Mudrovčić Paladin Peričić Petrinović Piškulić (Piskulich) Potočnjak Radetić Sajčić Šebalja Sekulić Šegulja Sokolić Stipanić Toljan Umiljenović Vlašić Žanić (Xanich) Zoričić Žvanović (Xvanovich) n a previous chapter, I mentioned that Vlach families entered Novi in the 1600s under the auspices of the Frankopans. Although completely integrated today, in earlier times they tended to live apart from the mainstream in the village of Donji Zagon, a couple of kilometres to the east of Novi. These families were identified separately in the local history. Some of their family names included: Baričević Deranja Glavičić Jovanović Karlović Kostić Krajnčić Mrkulja Rubčić Tomić

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In one source, the Novljanski family name Peričić appears originally from Donji Zagon. It seems they quietly slipped into Novi and got themselves identified as Novljani rather than Zagoni. I remember my Dad repeating old jokes about Zagoni so there was doubtlessly rivalry between the settlements.

My family names

In the various Novi genealogy lists around the spelling of our surnames vary but they follow historical or local variations. First names will also vary, as their owners often used translations or diminutives. Piskulich and Dobric Before I start on my genealogy, I will repeat some earlier comments to dispel any confusion about the spelling of my family name. In 17th century Croatia, it was spelt Piskulich in the old Latin/Germanic script used by the Church, but after the introduction of the modern phonetic Croatian alphabet in the mid 19 th century it was altered to Piškulić. In our case, the phonetic alphabet enabled more accurate reproduction of the subtleties of the š and ć sounds. There is an amusing version of the origin of the name Piškulić. Pišku sounds similar to the Croatian slang for female genitals and I remember being the butt of a joke about this once by a Dalmatian Croat. The fact that his surname was Mrša (one translation of mrša is carrion - the rotting dead body of an animal) is a little ironic. The only Croatian words I can find that may be a root of our name are piškor (also spelt piskor) meaning lamprey, an eellike fish or piskarati to scribble. There is also a similar sounding Russian word piskulka which is a bird of the goose family and in a Slovenian dialect a piška is a newly hatched chicken. Piscul (pronounced pis-kool) is a Romanian word for a mountain peak and it appears in a number of place names throughout Romania. Given the population movements in the region from the 6 th century onwards this is another possibility. So we may be descended from someone who was a scribe or simply named after a bird, fish, vagina or some mountainous place! I prefer the scribe theory over genitalia and I won’t even contemplate the fact that the piskor is a slimy, parasitic fish with a large mouth! In 1913, in New Zealand, my grandfather Frank again adopted the spelling Piskulich, obviously a close English equivalent to Piškulić. It would be nice to think that he deliberately chose the old spelling for sentimental reasons but it was probably coincidental. Spelling and other variations are particularly apparent in some old church records. For example, Latinised Christian names were fashionable in Novi during the late 18th century, but had fallen out of favour a generation or so later. One ancestor, baptised Hieronijmous Dobrich (1764 -1842), also appears as Hiro and the Croatian equivalents Jerolim and Jere! In different records scattered over the centuries his surname also appears as Dobrich, Dobrić and Dobric. My grandfather, born Franjo Piškulić used combinations of Frank/o Piskulic/h, his wife Marija also appears as Maria and his sons Dragutin Osip (my father) and Milan became known as Charles Joseph and Emil (also Emile) respectively on their arrival in Australia. My other grandfather used various combinations of Petar/Peter Dobrić/ Dobric/h, his wife Katarina appears as Kate and Katharine and his daughter (my mother) was baptised Vatroslava but quickly became Ignatia (a literal translation) upon their arrival in Australia. Nadimak In addition to their surname, many families from Novi also carried a semi-permanent nickname to identify particular family lines. The Croatian word for this name is nadimak and its use was common throughout Croatia. It must be a widespread European custom, as a similar system (referred to as two-name) appeared as far away as Highland Scotland in places where many families shared common surnames. xxxix

Both my maternal grandparents were born Dobrić but according to my mother, Peter’s side was identified as Dobrić-Lukinić and Kate’s as Dobrić-Kontić. I don’t believe Kontić is a genuine Nadimak. I think Peter made it up to tease Kate about her family connection with the aristocratic Mažuranić name (Kontić – of the Count). My father’s line was Piškulić-Arbica (Arbica is the diminutive form of Adalbertov). Peter Dobric’s mother was born a PiškulićZdolčević. We had an old family friend by the name of Frank Fumic, who started life as Piskulić-Fumić. I have heard of other lines such as Piškulić-Anić, Piškulić-Juraš and Piškulić-Vujica as well. Similarly, members of my paternal grandmother’s family Radetić carried the nadimak Lulić. There is no obvious pattern to the way the nicknames developed. Some are obviously derived from a family patriarch as in Dobrić-Lukinić. The suffix ić can mean ‘of’ so in this example Luka (Lucas 1794-1829) probably started the line but PiškulićZdolčević apparently derives from iz (from) Dolac, an area around Novi. In my grandparents’ time in Novi, there were possibly four separate Dobrić lines and at least half a dozen different Piškulić lines that would have shared common ancestors from generations ago. As far as I can work out, these nadimak names started appearing around the early to mid 1800s during a time of rapid population growth in Novi. Domazet To confuse the situation a little more, there are family legends that somewhere in the distant past at least two of our male ancestors actually changed their names and joined their wives’ families. Allegedly a Piškulić ancestor was born Modrić but adopted Piškulić on marriage and similarly a Dobrić ancestor on Petar’s side was born Umiljenović. The names Modrić and Umiljenović still appear around Novi today. There is no evidence of these incidents occurring in the available records spanning the last 350 years, but they quite possibly happened earlier, as this was a common custom in the old days if there were no sons to carry on a family name. In fact, the custom was so common in old Croatia that there was a word for it, Domazet; literally home son-in-law. The meaning of this word becomes obvious if you understand that it was customary for a new daughter-in-law to join her husband’s family. In this case the son-in-law (zet) lived in the home (in Croatian; doma) of his wife’s family. Usually a younger son of a family with poor inheritance prospects would be encouraged into this arrangement and he would become entitled to his wife’s inheritance at the cost of surrendering his surname. This arrangement was necessary in feudal Croatia as ownership of a family’s property would revert to the Prince if there was no male heir. Paskulich Sensitive to Australian jokes about his name, my father was unofficially using Paskulich as his surname by 1941, and to clear up the problems it caused me with officialdom, I changed mine legally to Paskulich in 1970 when I turned 21. My parents and siblings followed a short time later. Considering the way it evolved, I believed that my surname was unique so I was intrigued to find Internet references to Same (Sam) Paskulich (1886-1949) and his wife, Anna Paskulich (1892-1982) in Butte Montana USA. Sam and Anna had two daughters Mayme (1914-2011) and Katherine (1915 -2008). Mayme married a Harold Brown (1902-1985) and Katherine married a Robert Schofield (died 1972). It seems Sam and Anna had no male children so that Paskulich line has died out. It seems that Sam and Anna altered their name some time after 1928 as they appear on record as Piskulich in that year. More recently, I found a reference to an Aloysius Paskulich appearing before a San Francisco court on bankruptcy and fraud charges in August 1903. This pushes the use of my surname way back. An obituary to a Louis Paskulich, President of the Paskulich Piano Co, appears in August 1918 in Chicago. This may be the same person as above given the similar Christian names but he obviously cleaned up his act as .the obituary implied that he was well regarded and associated with the Catholic Church. Louis died a bachelor so that line also came to a dead end. And yet another popped up! John B.

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Paskulich married Anna Starika in 1915 in Chouteau County Montana but then they disappeared from the record so I fear their story is lost. It is interesting to see the spelling variations of our name as our people migrated around the world. So far I have found Piškulić, Piskulic, Piskulich, Piskulick, Piskolich, Piscolich, Pisculic, Pisculich, Pisculiche, Pisculichi, Peskulich and, of course, Paskulich!

Some Family Stories

In the following passages I will try to tell a few stories about some family members to give an inkling of my heritage.

Charles Joseph Paskulich (1922-1993) My Dad was born Dragutin Osip Piškulić in 1922 in Novi Vinodol, the first child of Franjo (Frank) and Marija (nee Radetić). As previously mentioned his named metamorphosed over the next 50 years into Charles Joseph Paskulich. During the early 1920s the family moved to France where Frank worked on several post-war restoration projects. A memory of France that lived with my Dad was visiting a war veterans’ hospital with his father. He once spoke of this experience seeing men who were terribly maimed from the Great War (WW1). He could have been no more than four years old. Dad’s brother Milan (Emil) was born in France in 1926. Marija and her children returned to Novi and Frank travelled to Western Australia, arriving in Fremantle Western Australia (WA) in December 1926. Frank joined his half brother, Bogoslav Piškulić, in Boulder and started a long working life as an underground gold miner in Kalgoorlie’s famous “Golden Mile”. I reconnected with Bogoslav’s descendents in recent years, largely through researching this history.

France 1926: Frank and Marija Piskulich, baby Milan and my father

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Marija, Dragutin and Milan spent several pleasant years in Novi between 1926 and 1929 while Frank worked in Australia. Even though he was under age, Dad attended school for a year in Novi on the insistence of his maternal grandmother who wanted him to be educated in his native tongue. In 1929 they turned their back on their homeland forever and left to join Frank in Australia, arriving at Fremantle in June 1929. Can you imagine leaving Novi, a beautiful town on the Adriatic coast, and a few weeks later setting up home in a corrugated iron shack on the edge of the wilderness in South Boulder WA? Family legend has it that my grandmother wept for weeks after her arrival. Although a number of single men emigrated here before them, Frank and Maria lay claim to theirs being the first family to immigrate to Australia from Novi. Kalgoorlie-Boulder Between 1929 and 1933 the family enjoyed a reasonably comfortable life in Kalgoorlie-Boulder. Frank was a “gun miner” (specialist) and made good money even during the Depression. Apparently, even Marija liked the place after a while. They were living well and she was among many people from her homeland. Dad’s sister Jean was born in Kalgoorlie in 1933. One of Dad’s stories I remember from this time was his first contact with Australian aborigines. He was terrified. He thought they were the Gypsies from Croatia! Gypsies were despised and feared throughout Europe, and still are in some places. The Kalgoorlie Race Riots Another incident that remained forever in my father’s mind was the Kalgoorlie race riots that started on Australia Day 29th January 1934. Dad was an 11 year old boy when an Anglo-Irish Australian mob went on a rampage against new Australian residents, mostly Italians, Greeks and Croatian Yugoslavs, after the accidental death of a drunken Australian, George (Ted) Jordan, while being evicted from the Home from Home Hotel by an Italian barman, Claudio Mattaboni. Within 24 hours, a mob, believed to number over 1000, torched the hotel and tore through the town. I heard my Dad speak of hiding in the bush near the Boulder Cemetery with his mother, young brother Emil and infant sister Jean while his father and uncle stood guard armed with an axe for protection. One story has it that Frank almost chopped up one of his countrymen who accidentally blundered into their camp at night! The mob ransacked or torched houses owned by “foreigners” and at one point my Dad was sent back into Boulder to see if their home still stood. He was also sent to the cemetery to collect tap water for the camp! Try and imagine an 11 year old on missions like that, all under the cover of darkness? The strife lasted for five days, culminating in the “Battle of Dingbat Flats”. Several people were killed and many injured before a large police contingent arrived from Perth and took control. Although the death of a drunken Australian at the hand of an Italian is touted as the cause of the riots, the real cause was a deep-seated resentment of foreigners working in the mines. They were hard workers and prepared to take risks to make money. The problem was also compounded by corrupt mine bosses taking “slingbacks” (bribes) for favoured access to work. Considering that this was all during the Great Depression, with record unemployment, and in a country with a naturally racist population, the climate was set for trouble. A similar incident occurred earlier in Kalgoorlie just after WW1 so it wasn’t a unique event. Frank Piskulich was obviously popular in the mines. On the day of the riot he went to work but was warned by some “Australian” workmates to leave as some hotheads were threatening to kill foreigners. He went home and removed his family to the relative safety of bushland near the Boulder Cemetery. Their house was ransacked by the mob and some precious family possessions were lost but luckily it wasn’t burnt. The riots were a dangerous and unsettling time in Western Australian history. The barman at the heart of the strife, Claudio Mattaboni, was tried and acquitted of causing Jordan’s death. He later married the widowed proprietor of the destroyed Home from Home Hotel and they moved to the Perth metropolitan area. For a while during the 1940s they lived in the Gosnells area, not far from Frank Piskulich in Orange Grove.

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An Australian newspaper article of 3 Feb 1934 describing the riots Source: http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/104483314?searchTerm=riots boulder&searchLimits= Orange Grove Frank Piskulich moved his family to Perth immediately after the riots. He had bought property in Eva Street, Orange Grove (near Perth WA), in 1932. They stayed in old shacks on the land and when the tensions abated, returned to Kalgoorlie/Boulder for a short while. A small brick dwelling was built at Eva Street while they were away and late in 1934 the family returned there to start a vineyard. Upon arrival they began to clear the land. As a boy, my father helped his father clear six hectares (16 acres) of huge red gum trees with cross-cut handsaws in preparation for the vineyard. Dad worked on this property with his mother while Frank returned to the Goldfields. At his father’s insistence, Dad left school at the age of 14 and by the time he was 15 he was a competent vigneron. The land remained in the family for over 50 years but the house and vineyard are long gone and now a light industrial complex covers the site. Through the 1930s and until he went to war, Dad worked in the vineyard, boxed in the local “Temperance League” competition and played (Australian Rules) football for the local Maddington Football Club. He was a capable sportsman, winning a local boxing light-heavyweight competition against adults at the age of 15 and winning a senior football club award in 1941. He tried out for the Subiaco Football Club as well, but the war cut short any professional aspirations. After his return from the war, he played football again for Maddington through the late 1940s.

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The war years In 1941, at the age of 19, Dad was called up into the 10th Light Horse, then a local reserve army unit. He spent some time in this unit doing his basic military training and involved in patrols and manoeuvres along the coast. By 1942 Japan had entered the war and Dad volunteered to join the 16 th Battalion AIF and became an infantryman. He served in southern Australia for a while and then his unit was sent to defend Darwin in 1943 where they suffered a number of bombing attacks by the Japanese. I remember Dad’s comment that the defence of Darwin in those dark days of the war consisted mostly of trying to be in a different place to the Japanese attacks.

10th Light Horse 1941: Dad in centre. An interesting bit of information; apparently on the first bombing raid on Darwin on 19 February 1942, the Japanese dropped twice as many bombs as they did in the famous Pearl Harbour attack of 7 th December 1941! The official death toll in Darwin on that day in February was around 300 but unofficial estimates put it much higher. For a long time censorship laws ensured that the true magnitude of the attack was understated to reduce the risk of mass panic in the populace if it realised Australia’s vulnerability. A version of the first Darwin attack is portrayed in the 2008 Nicole Kidman film “Australia”. My father served overseas fighting the Japanese in New Britain from late 1944 to the end of the war. Dad never said a lot about the war, generally humorous stories, if any. From my experience, this is a common trait with returned servicemen but the stories I’ve heard through Mum include him being lightly wounded on one occasion, carrying out a wounded comrade after a contact and his unit finding the site of the Tol Plantation massacre, where the Japanese had brutally executed numerous Australian prisoners of war (POW) in 1942. My Dad despised the Japanese for the rest of his life.

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New Guinea/New Britain map Source: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/pp.html

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Tol Plantation site: Remains of Australian prisoners massacred by the Japanese. Photo by Bill Tomasini 1945 (from my father’s collection) After the war finished there was a grading system that decided the order in which men were brought home and discharged; married men first etc. While waiting his turn, Dad spent some time in Rabaul, New Britain as a guard in a Japanese POW camp. An interesting story he told from this time was of standing by and watching a Japanese officer brutally beat a Jap soldier who had refused an inoculation from Australian medics. To interfere would have jeopardised discipline and order. With only a few hundred Australians guarding tens of thousands of Japanese they relied heavily on the Japanese officers’ cooperation and their military hierarchy.

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Wartime New Britain: Captured Japanese tanks. Dad at left of picture Photo probably by Bill Tomasini 1945 (from my father’s collection) Dad was demobilised from the army in 1946. He had been courting Ignatia Dobric almost from the moment he arrived back in Australia and they were married in St Patrick’s Church in Fremantle in August 1946.

Ignatia Dobric and Charles Paskulich: Engagement photograph 1946

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Married life Mum and Dad lived on the Eva Street property for a few years after their marriage. When the in-laws returned to Kalgoorlie for work, Mum and Dad managed the property by themselves for a couple of seasons but times were bad and they barely broke even. I was born in January 1949 in Victoria Park. Mum had a very difficult time and was only saved by a massive blood transfusion. She was always a very determined person and claims that while semi-comatose she heard the Sister say “when the lights go out this one will go with them” and that drove her to survive. To understand this story you must realise that this was only three years after the Second World War and everything was rationed including electricity. Anyway, Mum had another four children and turned 88 this year! Most of my family are volunteer blood donors and I will always remember Mum’s lively debates with the Jehovah’s Witness Church members who canvassed door-to-door. The Jehovah’s Witness Church forbids blood transfusions. In 1950 Mum and Dad built their family home in River Avenue Maddington. It started out as three rooms built largely out of black-market material, as supplies were still difficult to come by five years after the war. When we moved in, the house was still under construction. Over the years it grew to accommodate their growing family. The structure was timber framed, fibrocement but it was robust and is still occupied by new owners over 60 years later. Dad worked in the Gosnells “BlueRock” quarries during the early 1950s as a contract Spaller. In simple terms he split rocks with a sledgehammer and loaded them onto small rail wagons. You must understand that Western Australia was a poorly resourced backwater in this era and sophisticated machinery was uncommon. There were no crushing plants in the Gosnells area capable of crushing anything much larger than a football so it was down to men like my father to do the work of machines by breaking the large quarry stones into manageable fragments. Dad could break and hand load 16 tonnes of granite or diorite rock daily! From Mum’s descriptions he had a physique that would make today’s sporting iron-men look puny by comparison. Most modern folk can’t appreciate the skill and strength involved in that job. I’ve spoken of “slingbacks” to mine bosses in Kalgoorlie. Apparently this practice was alive and well in Dad’s time. I was once told that if you wanted favoured access to the good rock you had to pay the pit boss one pound a week for the privilege. At a contract rate of five shillings for two tons, the first eight tons was for the boss. The pit boss was Jack Sanderson. I remember him from my childhood, probably because he only had two digits on one hand. Apparently he lost the other three in childhood playing a dare game with his brother that involved an axe! As an aside, the currency of Australia at that time was similar to the British so the pound (£) was the basic unit, divided into 20 shillings and in turn 12 pennies to the shilling, and you thought basic maths was hard! Try multiplying 13 items at one pound three shillings and sixpence each in your head! At the same time we employed British weights and measures such as pounds, ounces, gallons (British not US gallon) inches feet, yards, furlongs miles etc, etc. In 1966 Australia adopted decimal currency (dollars and cents) and in the 1970s we moved completely over to the European based metric system of weights and measures where everything is in units of tens. Amazingly simple compared to the early days. It begs the question: What do kids do all day at Primary School now? Back to my father; Later on in the quarries, Dad worked as a Powder Monkey, an unglamorous title for the position of explosives expert. Mum once mentioned that he regularly suffered terrible headaches caused by exposure to the explosive chemicals. I wonder if this exposure influenced his poor health in late life. In 1954 Dad took on a contract to mine manganese ore in a place called Woody- Woody, about two hundred kilometres southeast of Port Hedland in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. This was ten years before the big 1960s mining boom in Western Australia. The men lived in a rough bush camp and worked in conditions that would not be tolerated by today’s miners. Through the 1950s and early 1960s, Dad spent a lot of time away from home on mining contracts.

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My mother often talked about their “Purple Patch”. This is one of those rare periods in your life when everything goes right and you have a chance to get ahead. I left school in August 1964 at the age of 15 and went to work straight away and ceased being a financial burden. At around the same time Dad was employed by Utah Constructions in Port Hedland to supervise construction work for its bourgeoning iron ore facility. He spent a year in Port Hedland earning very good wages. When that contract finished he spent a short while working in Mount Goldsworthy as a mine supervisor. The contract in Port Hedland was a turning point in my parents’ lives. They certainly did not become wealthy but the financial pressure went off a little and they were able to set up for their future rather than just struggle to make ends meet. From the time he finished with Mount Goldsworthy until his retirement at the age of 61, Dad worked as a quarryman for the Readymix Group, both in their quarry in Gosnells and at various country locations around Western Australia. I was called up into the army in 1970. I remember taking a short trip around the south west corner of Western Australia and surrounds with Dad just prior to my joining up. We toured areas where he had served while in the army, stayed in Geraldton and visited our family friend, Frank Fumic (Piskulich-Fumic) on his farm at Tardun, east of Geraldton. It was the last time that we spent a lot of time together. Dad started having health problems in his mid fifties. He retired at age 61. He had a few good years in retirement but his health deteriorated steadily and, on the 28 th July 1993, at the age of 71, he died at Bentley Lodge with Mum at his bedside. A sad and unfair way to end what was often a tough and uncompromising life.

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Franjo Piškulić (1895 - 1984) and Marija Piškulić (1899 – 1975) Marija Piškulić (nee Radetić) Apart from the genealogy and a few snippets, I know little about the early life of my paternal grandmother Marija (Maria). She was born in 1899 in Novi, the only daughter of Dragutin and Elizabeta Radetić. She had an older brother Osip (Josip – Joseph) and a younger brother Milan. When she was a toddler, Maria’s father, Dragutin, travelled to southern Africa to work, There he contracted a fever and died at the age of 33, a sad but common fate for adventurous young men of that time. I think my father said that Dragutin was buried in Bulawayo in the former Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) but I can’t be certain about that.

Elizabeta Radetić, Maria on lap and Josip. Novi around 1901

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Dragutin Radetić, around 1901 Of the two brothers, Josip (born 9 June 1897) emigrated to the USA as a young man, married there, and died in August 1962. Only recently I reconnected with that branch of the family. Josip adopted the name Joe Radick, had seven children and numerous grandchildren. Their surnames altered over time and include Radick, Roderick and Radetich!

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Joe Radick (seated): USA probably mid 1950s Milan married in Novi, then left his wife and child and travelled to Argentina to work, never to return. Legend has it that he was murdered. The old Novljani had a propensity to gossip and slander so I’ll not persist with that story. As far as I can work out he died around 1940. If anyone can add to Milan’s story please contact me. I’d love to close that chapter of the Radetić story.

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Milan Radetić and bride Ega: Novi late 1920s As a wartime internee in New Zealand, Frank Piskulich was repatriated to his homeland in 1919. He courted Maria upon his return to Novi and they were married in 1920. About a year or so after their marriage Frank was called up into the Yugoslav army. This time would have been hard for her as my father was born in 1922 during Frank’s military service and the Yugoslavs would have done little to support soldiers’ dependents. Frank’s military service had ended by early 1923 and he travelled to France to work. Maria and young Dragutin followed and from this point onwards the story of her travels is the same as my father’s previously described. Most of Maria’s life in Australia was spent on the family property in Eva Street, Orange Grove WA. All of her children grew up there. Frank and Maria continued to live on the property in Orange Grove until Maria became ill in the early 1970s. After being cared for by her daughter Mary for a couple of years, my grandmother, Maria Piskulich died at Fremantle in July 1975 at the age of 76. Franjo Piškulić (Frank Piskulich) Some years ago a book (and television series) called A Fortunate Life appeared in Australia. It told of the harsh boyhood experiences of a local man, Albert Facey in the early 1900s. At the time there was a lot of interest in his story but it was not much worse than many others, including the early experiences of my grandfathers. I will tell a little of what I know about Frank Piskulich. Frank was born Franjo Piškulić in Novi in 1895, the son of a widower (also Franjo) and widow (Marija Kargačin nee Zoričić) who both had children from their previous marriages. His parents were well into their forties when he was born and most of his half-siblings were much older than him. Young Frank grew up quickly and in 1909 at the age of thirteen he was sent away to work overseas in German South-West Africa (Modern day Namibia). The idea was that the young men went away to work and sent money back to build up the family fortunes. He wasn’t completely alone because there were other Novljani in the colony at the same time.

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I know that young Frank worked in the German colony on a railway project but the brutal behaviour of the Germans encouraged him to move on in September 1910. He made his way to Sydney and then on to New Caledonia where I believe he met up with one of his half-brothers (most likely Arba Piškulić). After a brief stint in the French colony they travelled to New Zealand and eventually ended up working as gum diggers. I have a copy of a New Zealand diggers licence issued to Frank dated 1913. I came across a tantalising snippet during my research. A man named F. Piskulich is recorded leaving Auckland in May 1894 along with several others with uniquely Novljani names. It is possible that this man was Franjo Piškulić senior. It fits in the time between the death of his first wife and marriage to my great-grandmother and also suggests a family link to the gum fields of NZ. Unfortunately I cannot prove this link and again would welcome any clarification. A brief digression regarding the brutal behaviour of the German Colonial forces in South-West Africa: A native uprising in 1904 was viciously crushed and resulted in General Lothar von Trotha issuing Vernichtungsbefehl, an “extermination order”. Tens of thousand of natives ultimately died. Concentration camps were set up and in one case inmates from the camp on Shark Island near Luderitz were used on railway construction in 1906/1907. Their treatment was so brutal that it is estimated that the railway line from Lüderitz to Aus cost ten lives per kilometre.

Construction of the Lüderitz - Aus Railway Line by native prisoners: 1905/06 Source: http://www.klausdierks.com/Namibia_Rail/2.htm The French weren’t much better. New Caledonia was a French penal colony and another story has it that young Frank witnessed a public execution by guillotine while on the island. It is difficult to imagine the effect of these terrible experiences on a fifteen year old boy.

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New Caledonia guillotine about 1910. Source: http://boisdejustice.com/History/History.html Back to new Zealand. The gum was semi-fossilised tree sap from ancient buried kauri forests and was processed into a form of varnish used in the furniture industry. It was highly prized and the industry employed many Croatian migrant workers. Even today, the nickname of these people in parts of New Zealand is Dallies, short for Dalmatians, a generic local name for any Croats. In 2003 I travelled to the gum fields in and around Dargaville in New Zealand where Frank worked. There are two excellent museums in the district that preserve some of the gum digging history. It was a hard, dirty job but sometimes financially rewarding. In my travels in New Zealand I met a couple of people originally from our town of Novi and they were still able to tell me stories about Frank’s exploits. Given that he had left the country before they were born he must have made an impact on the local Dallies for the legends to persist! My grandfather was powerfully built and by all accounts a wild young man. Frank worked in New Zealand until 1917 but his status as an Austrian citizen during wartime eventually caught up with him. Frank was identified as an Austrian and interned as a civilian enemy alien in a prisoner of war camp on Somes Island in the south of New Zealand. He was in custody from April 1917 until late in 1919. Frank was repatriated to his homeland in 1919. My parents always thought that he was deported from New Zealand but my research tells a different story. It shows that he was one of the few internees recommended by the Camp Commandant to be allowed to remain in the country. It’s pretty clear that Frank wanted to return home and left voluntarily. This wasn’t the case with most of the other internees (particularly of German background) who were forced to leave. Even to the point that those legally naturalised as British Subjects were “de-naturalised” by the New Zealand government and special legislation was enacted to allow easy divorces for their locally born wives should they not wish to accompany their husbands back to Europe. A similar situation existed in Australia and stories abound of poor treatment of internees. An interned relative of Sam Grubelich (part of our extended family on Neda’s side) was shot dead by a guard in the Holdsworthy internment camp near Liverpool in Sydney Australia during this time. Frank left New Zealand on the Willochra in May 1919 but he and other non-military returnees were put off at Sydney NSW and spent some months in the Holdsworthy internment camp. In September 1919 they left for Europe on the Frankfurt. It must have been a trying time for them as the great influenza epidemic struck Sydney at this time and there were at least 37

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deaths of internees at Holdsworthy in this period. Coincidently, I undertook some training in the artillery barracks at the Holdsworthy camp during my military service in 1970. Another story about Frank that became a local legend is that in Kalgoorlie in the 1930s, he is credited with rescuing a miner underground. Variations of this story have been told over the years and a couple of fictionalised versions have popped up in print. As I understand it, an Italian miner called Longo was caught in a shaft set with explosives ready to go off. Frank took charge and hauled him out hand-over-hand on a rope. It became local folklore. I was drinking one night in the mess in a workers’ camp in Port Hedland WA in the early 1980’s, some 50 years after the event and was told the story by an old timer originally from Kalgoorlie. Nearly 60 years after the incident I heard the same story again in Kalgoorlie from a local resident who would have only been a baby when it happened. After the racial strife of 1934 settled down, Frank returned to Kalgoorlie and, over the next 14 years, he continued working as an underground gold miner on a seasonal basis in the Lake View and Star mine, finishing up at the end of 1948. He was diagnosed with silicosis, or dust on the lungs and was prevented from working underground again. Silicosis was a terrible disease that claimed many miners’ lives but in Frank’s case it must have been identified early as he lived for another 36 years. Frank accompanied my father and his other son, Emil, on the manganese ore contract at Woody-Woody in 1954 and worked in the brickyards near his home in Orange Grove for a few years until retirement at age 65. He passed away in 1984 aged 89. Frank and Maria Piskulich worked hard and suffered many privations and disappointments in their lives but their contribution to Australia has been an auspicious one. They brought up four children in this country who, in turn, produced 10 grandchildren, then 25 great grandchildren and at last count (2013) 4 great, great grandchildren. Their descendents include tradesmen, teachers, social workers, medicos, academics and business professionals. Their two sons served in Australia’s armed forces during the Second World War and their grandson (me) fought for Australia in the Vietnam War. Not a bad effort!

Frank and Marija Piskulich with their grandchildren at Orange Grove in about 1969: Children L to R of photo: Stephen, Leanne and Robert Fisher, Anthony and Michael Simich, Karen, John, Irene, Jeffery and Grant Paskulich.

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Petar Dobrić (1897 - 1971) and Katarina Dobrić (1905 – 1983) Petar Dobrić was born in 1897 – fourth in a family of 2 girls and 5 boys. His father was, Matij Dobrić and his mother was Lucija nee Piškulić (Zdolčević).

Lucija: Novi about 1930

Matij: Novi 1906

I won’t say too much about my maternal grandparents’ early background as it is remarkably similar to that of my paternal grandparents Franjo and Marija Piškulić. Petar (Peter) arrived in Western Australia (WA) from Novi in 1914 just before WW1. He ended up working on a wheat farm for the duration of the war. As an Austrian citizen he also was identified as an enemy alien but because he was under military age and his employer guaranteed him he was not interned. Peter formed a close friendship with his employers (the Gray family) that lasted for half a century. Peter was an intelligent man with a thirst for knowledge. In the early days he spent his evenings with the Gray children sharing their homework He arrived in Australia with only a rudimentary education and no knowledge of English. Yet I remember him as a scholarly type with a remarkable command of perfect un-accented English. His general knowledge was prodigious. In 1922, Peter returned to what had become Yugoslavia with the intention of staying a few months to visit his family before returning to Australia. Unfortunately the Yugoslav government had different ideas and he was conscripted into the new Yugoslav army and wasn’t discharged until 1924. In 1924 Peter courted and married Katarina (Kate) daughter of Marija and Bartol Dobrić. Given they were both Novlani, shared the same surname and considering the complicated wreath that is our family tree, Peter and Kate surprisingly don’t appear to be too closely related, although I’m sure some enthusiastic genealogist will aim to prove me wrong.

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Peter and Kate Dobric on their wedding day: Novi 1924 Shortly after their marriage Peter left for Australia with the intention of bringing out his wife soon afterwards. Kate was pregnant with Vatroslava when he left and he wasn’t able to bring them out until 1930. Peter didn’t see his daughter Vatroslava (Ignatia) until she was five years old! Ignatia is, of course, my mother. Between 1930 and 1942 the family lived in rural WA, first on a wheat farm managed by Peter, then in the Perth hills on Peter’s orchard and finally further out in the hills at Mundaring when Peter sold the orchard. Kate fell pregnant with her third child in 1941 and insisted the family move to civilisation. The bought a house in Fremantle WA which became the family home until Kate’s death in 1983.

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Dobrić family 1930 Novi: L to R Rear: Lucia, Anton and Kate. Front: Marija, Bartol and young Vatroslava I have very fond memories of my Pop Peter and Nanna Kate. As a child I spent a lot of time with them, particularly during school holidays. My father was often away mining and Peter regularly filled the gap as my male role model. I clearly remember him teaching me to fish off the Fremantle wharves and taking me on rambles along the coast around Fremantle. My memories of my Nanna Kate are of a happy natured lady who probably did a lot more for others than they did for her. She nursed Pop for years as his health declined and helped out her family and friends whenever she could, all without complaint. Another thing I recall about her was her uncanny way of materialising food! The family would often descend on them on a Sunday (there could easily be 10 people around for lunch) yet all this food would appear and you never actually noticed her preparing it. They never had much money so Kate was forced to be resourceful. She could knit, sew and deal with most household chores with ease. She grew most of their vegetables and one year I remember her raising a goat that ultimately ended up on the table. This was long before “capretto” appeared on the menus of swish Perth restaurants. All this was achieved in a back yard that was tiny even by today’s standards.

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Peter and Kate Dobric about 1970 Peter died in August 1971 while I was away overseas in the army. He was 74 and had suffered lung ailments for years. Kate lived on for another 12 years but in the last few years her health failed and she spent her last days in a nursing home. She passed away in May 1983 aged 78. Peter and Kate Dobric battled the odds in Australia in a similar fashion to my father’s parents and their contribution to this country was equally auspicious. They brought up three daughters and at last count had 13 great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren. I think they would be proud of how their descendents are making their mark on this country.

John Charles Paskulich (1949- )

What follows is an incomplete review of my life up to the time of writing. It is incomplete for one of two reasons. Either I’ve genuinely forgotten some things or more likely I’ve deliberately “forgotten” them. This is a general family history and not intended to be some kind of personal cathartic experience! I was born in Victoria Park Western Australia in 1949. My early childhood recollections are almost all pleasant ones. I know that both my parents cared for me deeply and being the first grandson, I was probably spoilt by my respective grandparents. Between 1954 and 1960 I was a student at Maddington Primary School. At that time it was a small, semirural government school. I don’t think it ever had more than 200 students spread over the seven grades during the time I was there. The headmaster was Earnest A. Smith, a veteran of the Great War of 1914-1918 but someone I remember as a strict but genuine teacher. I developed a strong interest in reading at primary school, no doubt influenced by Mr Smith and other teachers like him. Years later as a middle aged adult, these reading skills helped me complete some graduate and post-graduate university studies. I actually started school at a Catholic convent primary school in Fremantle. My father was away mining and Mum and I had moved in with her family in Fremantle for a few months. I was not supposed to start school until the following year but

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because I had enrolled in the Catholic system, the state school was obliged to take me when we returned to Maddington. Mum later revealed that she wanted me to start school early and that Mr Smith advised her of this ploy. I was always the youngest kid in the class throughout my school years. At the age of 12, in 1961, I started High School. I began fourth year, but left in the August of 1964 to start work at the tender age of 15. High school was reasonably uneventful. I was obviously a well-behaved lad as I only recollect being caned twice by the teachers in the three and a half years I was there! That last comment is an indicator of the times. Corporal punishment was officially sanctioned in Australian schools well into the 1960s. I cannot imagine today’s children accepting such treatment. Similarly, Australia still executed criminals at that time and I remember several famous hangings including that of serial killer Eric Edgar Cooke in 1964. Interestingly, it was all considered perfectly normal at the time. We have come a long way in a few decades. Going to work For a while in the early 1960s, Dad worked as a supervisor at a brickworks quarry south of Perth. When I was 14 years old, he organised some weekend work for me as the dragline operator’s offsider in the quarry. The dragline was a large steel bucket driven by a network of overhead steel cables that fed clay and shale into a crusher. The crushed product was emptied into small railway wagons underneath, transported to the nearby brickworks and made into bricks. If a large stone blocked the crusher, it was my job to smash it up with a sledgehammer and if the shear bolts snapped in the crusher itself I had to crawl through the machinery and replace them. It was a dirty and sometimes dangerous job and convinced me very early in life that the mining industry was not for me; I sometimes wonder if that wasn’t my father’s objective all along? I will always remember November 1963. As a 14 year old, I had started a short holiday (vacation) job in the city and clearly recall being shocked by an afternoon newspaper headline of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. I remember that as being my first serious lesson in world events and probably the start of my transition into adulthood. My first full-time job was with the now defunct Sandovers Company in Perth. I was employed as a junior clerk and had such interesting tasks as carrying huge mailbags from the post office back to work and then opening and sorting the mail. That period in Australian history was an excellent time for young job seekers. In my own case I already had a job, and in the January of 1965 I had the choice of two more, either a clerical position in the State Railways or a technical traineeship in the Post Master General’s Department (PMG), Australia’s government owned postal and telecommunications service. Just after my 16th birthday I joined the PMG as a Telecommunications Technician-in-Training. In recent years, in my job as a college lecturer, I was walking down a corridor with a roll of telephone cable slung over my shoulder in preparation for a class in telecommunications systems. It struck me that I hadn’t moved very far from my roots in nearly 50 years! The technician’s course was five years long and covered a broad range of practical and theoretical skills. Years later, I remember Jim Cook, one of my first PMG instructors, commenting that the course trained very good husbands! I don’t know about being a good husband but I can certainly put my hand to many different practical tasks. After my first year of full time training in the Technician’s School I was posted to the PMG Transmission Laboratory in Perth but spent much of my time in rural areas doing installation and line testing, usually only returning for advanced training at the Technician’s School or to complete the occasional metropolitan job. The Army I completed my PMG Technician’s course in December 1969. Earlier that year, I had been notified of my call up into the army but was allowed to defer to finish my training. The Australian conscription system was strange and unfair. All 20-yearold men had to register but only a limited number were selected by a ballot system based on birth dates. Implemented in 1964, conscription was for two years and its prime purpose was to supply troops for the Vietnam War. The call-up was stopped in 1973.

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At age 21, I entered the army and spent my first three months in recruit training at Puckapunyal in Victoria in south-eastern Australia. That was a shock to the system. I remember lining up for our uniform issue and, after stating that my trouser size was 36, received a 34. I complained that they wouldn’t fit and was simply told “they will”. After a month or so they did. I put on about three kilograms in weight added five centimetres to my chest measurement and lost five around the waist, all in less than 12 weeks. Who needs health clubs? After recruit training I was posted the School of Artillery at North Head, Sydney for about two months. Typical army logic applied to this posting. I was a qualified, five year trained communications technician and when asked if I had a corps preference my choices, in order, were Engineers, Tanks and Catering. I was posted to Artillery! It even got worse as far as I was concerned. I undertook gun surveyor’s training at the North Head barracks and passed with high marks. The students who performed well were posted to units bound for the Vietnam War; some of the poorer performers received postings to Singapore! My first lesson in the politics of war started at the Artillery school at North Head NSW. 1970 was near the end of the Vietnam War and strong anti-war sentiments had developed in parts of the population. Anti-war activists were everywhere but they tended to target the wrong people. Instead of targeting politicians, they attacked (mostly verbally) soldiers and graffitied military installations. I can clearly remember being on one guard duty at North Head armed with a baton against a possible “attack” by activists. It was a very divisive time. I have no time for those people. Their sentiments were valid but their abuse of young soldiers was unforgivable. More recently, there were reports of incidents where some misguided individuals abused and even spat on young Australian soldiers because of our Prime Minister’s decision to commit troops to the Iraq conflict in 2003. It was almost déjà vu! I didn’t agree with Australian involvement in that conflict but at the same time I empathise with our young servicemen and women. They are doing their job as their government demands of them and should not be victims of thoughtless morons. Upon completion of my training in Sydney I received my posting to 104 Battery, 12 Field Regiment of Artillery in Townsville, North Queensland. I spent about eight months in Queensland, training for overseas service. The time was divided between boring military life in Laverack Barracks and intensive military exercises in surrounding areas. Probably the most memorable training exercise was at the Jungle Training Centre (JTC) Kunungra in southern Queensland. There we completed three weeks of intense infantry style training. Kunungra was a fascinating place. It was set up to simulate the Vietnam War and was complete with a fully functioning and populated village. There were soldiers posted to Kunungra who played the fulltime role of “enemy”. I clearly remember one incident from that course. After a mock ambush, the trainers roundly abused me for not ensuring that enemy soldiers were all dead. I had “machine gunned” (with blank rounds of course) a group walking down a jungle trail and was surprised to see them all fall down. All were silent except for one left groaning, apparently wounded. As I lay there behind the gun in amazement one of our men went out to search the bodies and was promptly “shot” by the wounded enemy. The incident was an excellent set-up by the trainers and taught us all a valuable lesson, albeit at my expense. The Vietnam War After a short visit home to my family on pre-embarkation leave in April 1971 I left for Vietnam. Our unit travelled by chartered jet aircraft. A curious incident along the way fuelled my political cynicism. Our aircraft needed to stop over in Singapore, but Singapore’s international position was that it did not condone foreign troop movements through its territory. We were ordered to carry a white shirt with us on the plane and when we landed we removed our hats and replaced our uniform shirts. At this point, several hundred strong young men with short haircuts, black shoes, khaki trousers and white shirts marched off the planes into the terminal for breakfast. But there were no troop movements through Singapore!

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Humorous Australian Army poster 1971 Source: http://www.4rarassociationsaustralia.com/vietnam-ops.html Our arrival in Vietnam was uneventful and we were soon settled in Nui Dat, a large Australian base in the middle of Phuoc Tui Province about 80 kilometres east of Saigon. My first few weeks in-country were relatively quiet, working in an artillery command post (CP) firing routine artillery missions on the surrounding countryside and completing the occasional patrol outside the base. All this changed when, much to my dismay, I was ordered to join a forward observer (FO) team. I found myself attached to an infantry platoon in C (Charlie) Company, 4th Battalion RAR and out in the bush on patrol. At about the same time, Lieutenant Mathers, a Forward Observer (FO), was killed in action so you can appreciate my sentiments. I knew Mathers slightly. He was a junior officer at North Head while I was training there. My official title was Forward Observer’s Assistant (in military parlance, FO Ack) but most of the time I was directly responsible to my platoon commander to provide him with navigational assistance and fire support. I spent the majority of my time in Vietnam patrolling with the platoons of Charlie Company as FO Ack. I saw some action but was very lucky, having a couple of close shaves but surviving reasonably unscathed. I won’t dwell on this period. If you’re really interested there are several internet references devoted to the major actions we were involved in. If you look up “The Battle of Long Khan” “The Battle of Suoi Ca” and “The Battle of Nui Le” you will get an idea of Australian involvement in those last days of the war. I travelled to Hong Kong for a few days on R & R (Rest and Recreation) leave in August 1971. That was another culture shock. The night before I left Vietnam was spent in pandemonium in a US camp in Saigon under (albeit a brief) Viet Cong mortar attack. The next day I was a tourist in a civilised modern city and within a week I was back again, rifle in hand, preparing to go out on patrol! To add to all this, I rang home from Hong Kong to congratulate my parents on their 25th wedding anniversary and was told that my grandfather, Peter Dobric, had died that week. My last patrol with the infantry finished in October 1971 upon which I rejoined my artillery unit. I transferred from Nui Dat to Camp 500 in Vung Tau in preparation for the return to Australia. One sad incident marred these last few days in-country. I was on guard duty on the 27th October at the main gate and booked out three soldiers heading off into Vung Tau for a few

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hours break. Shortly afterwards, one of these men, Staff Sgt John Hall was murdered by a South Vietnamese in a bar following an argument. He was due to go home within the week. I returned to Australia on a Hercules transport aircraft via Darwin to South Australia. From there it was home via commercial jet. That last leg of the journey was interesting. The hostesses on the plane treated me, and the others with me, like royalty. In my experience, the only time Vietnam Veterans were well treated for the next 15 years!

John on Patrol: South Vietnam 1971 Return to civilian life Returning to civilian life was quite difficult. I couldn’t wait to get out of the army but missed it for a while after discharge. The army life was a lot more interesting than the prospect of a desk job in the PMG and to make it worse, many in the community treated Vietnam veterans like pariahs. I was abused by one girl I went out with when she found out I was a veteran and another told me point blank that she didn’t go out with ex-servicemen because they were psychotic! Although that one was a little closer to the truth, as I, like many others, had very taut nerves after my return and they sometimes resulted in some odd behaviour. Many ex-servicemen of my father’s era also treated us badly, scathing of our service and opposing our entry into the Returned Services League (RSL). Many Vietnam veterans suffer from post-traumatic stress disorders (but, of course, I will deny that there is anything wrong with me); I really believe these illnesses are as much a product of the treatment we received from our own people as war service. In my own case I returned home, completed discharge procedures and then back into the community with no real preparation for re-integration into civilian life. No access to counselling services and to be confronted by open hostility from many misguided members of the public and WW2 veterans certainly left their mark. I remember a medical appointment with a Department of Veterans Affairs doctor not long after my discharge. He asked me how I was going and I replied that I was lxiv

jumpy and had difficulty sleeping. The response was simply “That’s normal”. Two words that make up the sum total of my post-Vietnam counselling since 1971. The first indication of a change in community attitudes was the “Welcome Home” Parade for Vietnam Veterans in Sydney in 1987, 15 years after Australia finished in Vietnam. It laid some ghosts to rest and finally started our integration into the Australian consciousness. Since then The early 1970s was a time of rapid change for me. Within three years of leaving the army I met and married my first wife, Neda, we set up our first home, had our first child, I gained some higher PMG qualifications and embarked on a lifelong technical teaching career (first with the PMG and much later as a College lecturer). The quarter of a century following our wedding passed in what seems no time at all. There were many highs and also quite a few lows but it was rarely boring. The highlights were the births of my children Christina, Fiona and Peter and also my gaining a university teaching degree. The real lowlight was separation and ultimate divorce from Neda in 1999. After my separation I had part care of my son Peter. Between 1997 and 2000 we travelled extensively including to Bali, Europe and within Australia. It was a very valued time in my life. My brother Jeff died in October 2002, a sad event, particularly given his age of only 44 but the highlight of 2002 was the marriage of my Christina to Carl Guy in December. I thoroughly enjoyed the wedding celebrations and wish my daughter and son-in-law the best for their future together. In December 2003 I travelled to New Zealand and toured the North Island. I spent some time with the Sebalja family in Auckland who treated me with great hospitality. Earlier that year I met Mavis and since then our relationship blossomed. Mavis and I were married in 2006. It was a delightful day shared with around 75 friends and family. The wedding was a civil ceremony conducted at home. Mavis was given away by her brother Alan and attended by her niece Sharon. Alan, his wife Janet and daughter Sharon had travelled from UK for the occasion. I was attended by my son Peter. It was a great start to what looks to be a great future for us.

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Wedding Day October 2006: From left of photo: Christina, Peter, Myself, Mavis and Fiona. Since meeting Mavis life has been great. We have travelled extensively both inside and outside Australia. UK and Europe feature highly in our travels but we have also visited such places as Dubai, Morocco, Turkey and Brunei. Mavis retired in 2009 and I retired in 2012 after 48 years in the workforce. Plans are afoot for some more travelling and hopefully a pleasant decade or two to go!

In Closing

History is, at best, a collection of perceptions held by people. Croatian history is particularly subjective and is richly coloured with mythology and legend and family history is much the same. I have endeavoured to be as objective as possible but I know that my opinions will be biased both by my own experiences and the views of the people from whose stories and writings I gleaned much of my information. I believe I have made reasonable assumptions when information was ambiguous or incomplete but I’m sure some errors will be found in my interpretation of events. Just as I have corrected errors in stories passed down to me, please continue the process. If a reader has any new or more detailed information about my family history and connections, I welcome your contact. I can be contacted at [email protected]

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