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 Zagreb, introducing companies, such as Austal Ships, to counterparts over there.

Brian Rakich, Founding and Current Chairman of the WACCC and a Seashells Hospitality Group director, hosted the night at Rosie O’Grady’s Irish Pub in Northbridge.

Also there were Ljiljanna Ravlich, the former Minister for Education in the last State Labor government and a current Shadow Minister. Ljiljanna, born just south of Split, was the first woman from a non-English speaking country elected to our State Parliament, and Hrvoje Petrusic, current Croatian Consul in Perth.

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 me.

As mentioned before, one of Western Australia’s most important wrecks is that of the Dubrovnik-flagged vessel, the Stefano. Numerous studies and books have been written on the subject – but there are some gaps in the information published.

More research needs to be done in Rijeka where the boat was built about its construction and fit-out, and the Dubrovnik’s archives need to be plundered for anything else important.

Also Mack would like some design input on a possible monument to the men of the Stefano and the local aboriginals who saved the survivors.

And why do this research? For a possible future Masters in Maritime Archaeology.

While there I showed Roklan his great-grandmother’s and great-grandfather’s names on the Immigrants’ Memorial in front of the Museum. Dida (Ante Pecotich) arrived on the SS Cephee in 1927 and Baba (Danica Panzich) on the SS Otranto in 1937. Neither of them looks particularly luxurious.

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. His master was Nick Sohry was Croatian and Nick’s master was Marko Sambrailo – one the brothers from Korcula who built many of Western Australia’s crayfishing boats. The brothers arrived in the 1950’s setting up their boatyard on Riverside Drive in East Fremantle, and later moving to Fishing Boat Harbor before closing recently. These pictures below are of their yard.

At Aaron’s yard he has been renovating the Avone, a 36′ Halvorsen, built in Sydney in 1956.

The Halvorsen shipyard is another successful immigrant story.

Lars Halvorsen, son of a Norwegian ship-builder, moved his family to Sydney in 1925, and began putting boats in the water.

In 1962, Halvorsens built “Gretel” the first Australian challenger for the Americas Cup.

Until 1980 the family designed and built nearly 1,300 craft, including vessels for the Allied forces during WWII, which earned Lars’ eldest son Harold the Order of Australia Medal, in Australia.

In 1975 a joint venture company was formed in Hong Kong to design, build and market a new range of pleasure boats worldwide. The company was called ‘Kong & Halvorsen Marine & Engineering Company’. By the 1980s production had moved across the border to Southern China, and to the present day over 900 Halvorsen Boats have been built in East Asia.

Recently after 20 years Halvorsen has also returned to building in Australia.

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 – Bon Scott.

Robert ‘Bon’ Scott was born in Kirremuir, Scotland, in 1952. In 1952 the family moved to Melbourne and then in 1956, to North Fremantle, just near where we live when we are in Australia. Bon attended North Fremantle Primary just around the corner from their house – where Aklie started school last month.

He then went onto John Curtin High School – but dropped out at the age of 15.

After various bands he joined AC/DC in 1974.

In the early hours of 19 February 1980 (30 years ago last month), after a night of partying, Bon died in a friend’s car of either alcohol poisoning or an asthma attack. He was buried in Fremantle Cemetery – in what is now Australia most visited grave.

After his death Brian Johnson became the band’s lead vocalist.

AC/DC’s record is quite amazing – they are 1 of the top 5 selling bands of all time in the USA; ‘Black in Black’ is a double-diamond selling album, selling over 22 million copies, making it the 5th largest selling album ever in the USA.

A memorial statue of Bon was placed near Fishing Boat Harbor in on Fremantle’s waterfront. On it is a quote from Classic Rock magazine describing him as the ‘Greatest Rock ‘n’ Roll Front Man of All Time’.

Given their influence on world rock, it is a little surprising and sad that North Fremantle Primary didn’t do more honor the 30th anniversary of his death. I guess it had something to do with the minor run-ins he had with the law.

For those that want to visit all of Fremantle’s Bon Scott sights, they should jump on the Highway to Hell Tram Tour.

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 post).

On Saturday I was lucky enough to be a part of the 20th Rottnest Channel Swim – one of the world’s toughest open ocean swimming events. The swim is 19km from Cottesloe Beach to Thompson Bay, Rottnest Island.

Competitors can enter either solo, as a duo team or a team of 4 – and the categories are divided into all sorts of age groups – all sent off in different start waves from the beach early in the morning.

There were about 2500 competitors and 1500 support craft (each competitor or team needs a support paddler and boat). I was support paddler for Julie’s sister, her boyfriend, Julie’s nephew and Julie’s other sister’s boyfriend – a real family affair.

The race proceeds relatively sensibly until Perth’s famous sea breeze, the Freo Doctor, howls in. All of a sudden the whole fleet bunches up, with swimmers, kayaks and boats (some over 50′) going in all directions. To make any forward westerly progress everyone must battle south-westerly into the breeze. Many do the the first 1/2 of the race in a 1/3 of their total time. Our swimmers finished in just under 8 hours – an excellent effort.

The solo swimmers are presented with a special number plate which you see on cars around town – and they thoroughly deserve it – to complete crossing alone is inspirational. And it has been known for some to turn around and swim all the way back to Cottesloe!

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 underdogs, the Saints, who were trying to win their first flag since 1966 and only their second in the club’s 112-year history. The Cats, the wonder team of the last 5 years, were playing in their 3rd grandfinal in a row.

After 6 lead changes, in front of nearly 100,000 spectators the game looked as though it may end in a draw, with the teams tied 3 minutes before the siren, but the Cats kicked to late goals to win by 12 points – to give them two of the last three AFL flags.

Slobodna Dalmacija, the local newspaper, sent a reporter down to watch this strange sport; he called it Australian rugby in the article below. An over-excited Tony Šarić can be seen on the right, in his Saints jersey.

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 to be one of Australia’s top actors (and one of Julie’s Top 10 Sex Symbols) Ray Meagher. (Julie commented later that it was a bigger thrill for her to meet Ray than to have had Brad Britt brush past her breast in a New York bar 10 years ago!)

If you grew up in Australia in the 80s and 90s, Ray was a part of your nightly life as he has appeared since 1988 as Alf Stewart on Home and Away, one of the longest-running series on Australian television.

We were chuffed to see Split is now starting to attract some glitterati - after all Dubrovnik gets Tom Cruise and John Malkovich, and apparently one of the Princesses of Monaco as well as a Princess from Morocco were on Hvar last weekend.

To show Ray we weren’t just crazy soap opera groupies but were in fact famous ourselves, Julie showed him the picture of us in today’s Slobodna Dalmacija – he definitely seemed very impressed! And even asked to have his picture taken with Julie…

All joking aside – Cheers Ray!

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 – but that aside it is was very positive.

The fight between the Arista directors Don Marshall and Ivica Viljac is made evident with Don saying the boat will be released shortly, and Ivica contradicting that by saying it will not.

(It should be noted that Arista has decided to hire a Public Relations consultant, Lori Vitaljić from Predikat d.o.o., to help with their image.)

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 Jarman and Giles Weston (unregistered foreigners in Croatia at the time) from your promises to report Tim and Giles to immigration authorities for conducting business affairs against you.”

On Friday Julie was attacked by Ivica Viljac!

Addendum – 28 June 2009 – Surprise – we went to use our car on Sunday only to discover it had been vandalized – we wonder who did it?

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 was to push a letter under the door of our office at 10pm addressed to ‘Mr Badcock‘, a witty play on my name ‘Braddock‘.

In the letter, he and Don Marshall stated that I had 24 hours to remove my boat from their premises. Why the sudden change in heart – maybe their lawyer in Zagreb had advised them that they had already committed a crime by holding our boat hostage in their shed!

Even with such short notice Julie did an amazing job of getting all the required machinery to the yard to begin putting the boat in the water, as well as organizing help for our 2- and 5-year olds.

The Labud was moving smoothly towards freedom when suddenly Ivica Viljac arrived.

As part of Arista’s initial deal to use the space where they are presently they were obliged to make Ivica an equal director in their firm. (We are going to the police tomorrow to report David Hicks for making threats against us involving Ivica – but that story is for later).

Ivica’s reaction to Julie removing the Labud can be seen in the picture at the top of the post. He was not happy. He ran at Julie screaming! The police were called; he was arrested and found guilty of disturbing the peace and faces a future criminal assault charge.

What seems to have upset Ivica the most, however, was that Don Marshall had not told him what was going to happen on Friday. According to Julie, Tea Odza and Zana Dujmovic (the girls who work in Arista’s office), said there have been previous arguments in this regard – Don doing things in which Ivica believed he should have a say.

Since I was away (which David Hicks knew – I have a text message to prove it), and since Don and David’s letter pressured us to remove the boat by 3pm Friday, Julie, by herself, worriedly rushed to the yard, though with the belief she had the right to be there. She was completely unaware of the physical danger she was in.

It must be said – even the day after both of them (Don and David) sent text messages saying that everything that occurred was of our OWN doing!

Below is Julie at the police station waiting to act as a witness against Ivica.

But Don and David were not really interested in Julie. Their target appears to be Ivica himself. The next day a story in the local newspaper, Slobodna Dalmacija, explained why.

David and Don have started a new company, Arista Yachts, which is competing with two other companies, Viktor Lenac (RLE) and Adriamar, for the 30-year concession for a large amount of waterside space – they all want to set up a super-yacht yard.

The directors of the new company are Don, David and Geoff Mayhill. Geoff is involved in at least one British company, Ekwienox, with Arthur Hughes, who is owner of Hidden Croatia and Sail Croatia. Luka Grubor, the mouth piece for Arista Yachts in the article below is also a director of Sail Croatia.

But Ivica being on an assault charge should keep him out of the new venture from Arista’s POV – which would obviously upset Don – though he may go back to RLE whence he came.

The foreigners have learned well from the locals how business is done here!

(And where were Don and David during this fiasco – they had fled Croatia, we discovered later, because of serious physical threats made to them by their Croatian business partner in Arista Nautica (and Viljac’s boss) Mirko Rapić – and yet they happily sent Julie into the lion’s den. David’s boat Mystique was hiding on Hvar Island where I happened to bump into them. Someone was taking full advantage of the warm weather to work on his all over tan!)

For those that can’t see the video of Ivica attacking Julie below – click here!

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