The Western Australian Croatian Chamber of Commerce held another guest speaker night last month. This time Fred Botica, radio star on Mix 94.5, gave the presentation.
The Chamber was set up in 2003 to promote business links between the State of Western Australia, with its large Croatian population, and Croatia. It has sent 3 delegations to [...]

This week I had a second meeting with Dr Michael McCarthy, Curator of Maritime Archaeology at the WA Maritime Museum. His department is responsible on behalf of the Federal Government for all the historic wrecks off the coast of Western Australia. The reason for the meetings – Mack has a small project for [...]

Trying to learn more about wooden boat construction, I sought out the few remaining shipwrights in Perth.
I was lucky enough to find Aaron Woodall’s contact details, and visited him in his Henderson workshop. He was able to offer me a short-term job learning some tricks of his trade.
Aaron’s training came with a distinct Croatian influence. [...]

AC/DC are playing Subiaco Oval tonight – their last concert of their Australian / New Zealand Black Ice Tour. Last year they started their World Tour in Europe.
The band’s core was formed around a group of young Scottish-Australians in the early 1970’s – Angus and Malcolm Young, and the band’s lead singer and soul – [...]

It has been some time since our last post – but we now have time to catchup.
At the moment we are back in Australia – Julie has a job at Curtin University and I am working for one of the last wooden boat shipwrights in Perth – Aaron Woodall (but more about that in another [...]

Early this morning the Aussie expats and Aussie tourists in Split gathered at Cafe Libar to watch the Aussie Rules Football Grandfinal via satellite from the MCG in Melebourne.
The game between the Geelong Cats and Saint Kilda Saints developed in the one of the greatest finals ever. Most in the cafe were cheering for the [...]

Today we decided to go to the Irish Pub in Split to watch the rugby union test match between Australia and Italy (Australia won 34-12). There wasn’t a large crowd – just a nice group of 6 Aussies (for Queenslanders) who have just finished a week out on the islands.
One of the group turned out [...]

Today the local newspaper, Slobodna Dalmacija (Free Dalmatia), published a story about our plight to get our boat, the Labud, out of Arista Nautica’s shed.
It was a good article, describing how we want to use the boat to promote ‘real’ Dalmatian tourism.
Unfortunately it doesn’t mention the work I did for Arista Nautica and David Hicks [...]

David Hicks, of Arista Nautica and Arista Yachts, was questioned today by Croatian police in Split, regarding threats he made to us (Julie Morgan and Shane Braddock) on May 8th to harm us himself or use Ivica Viljac as a weapon.
David said on the day, “I want to scare you to protect my friends, Tim [...]

Whilst away on a trip this week I received a text message on Friday from David Hicks, an owner of Arista Nautica, who has been holding our leut, Labud, for several weeks, advising me I had some mail at my office.
After weeks of trying to approach Arista and deal with this issue respectively, David’s response [...]