Whole Wild World Read Online Free
Author: Tom Dusevic
albeit some 300 kilometres away in Kali, she would have avoided prosecution. Years earlier, and closer to home, the two women had spun elaborate stories about their cargo whenever stopped by the reviled Italian military-style finance police, the Corpo della Regia Guardia di Finanza, which operated in the Zadar area pre-war.
Milenka had resented the Finanzaâs arbitrary law- enforcement and now abhorred the way Titoâs party hacks were elevated to positions of authority. Compared with Russia, Yugoslavia was portrayed by some as a workerâs paradise, built on brotherhood and Adriatic majesty. To most Croatians, however, it was oppressive and corrupt, a communist state on the path to ruin. Yugoslavia couldnât even feed its people and relied on the aid, remittances and kickbacks of foreigners on both sides of the Iron Curtain to maintain the semblance of order. In this proletariat idyll, people were voting with their feet.
Looking for a way out of this dead end, fifteen men and women living in Rijeka, mostly from Kali, chipped in and bought a fishing boat. The group found a captain and mate willing to take them under the cover of night across the sea to Italy.
The journey was fraught with danger. The old vessel wasnât up to it. The crew feared capture after the engine failed and abandoned the asylum-seekers. The boat drifted near enough to shore for Italian authorities to bring them into port.
Milenka didnât tell her parents about her escape in advance and never saw them again. She spent almost two years in four different refugee camps, helped by Catholic relief agencies in Italy, including the US National Catholic Welfare Conference. The Italian camps were crowded and those seeking sanctuary were malnourished and vulnerable, especially women.
The two friends, however, found a decent level of comfort due to the church. From photos on the eve of their departure for Australia, Milenka and Rajka appear healthy and hopeful. By the late 1950s, there was a deluge of young escapees out of Croatia to Italy and Austria. Some of these desperate people were repatriated and punished. Milenka and Rajka stuck together and eventually made contact with a Croatian Catholic priest in Sydney, who sponsored their passage to Australia as âNew Settlersâ. In March 1958 the record shows Milenka, a stateless, single, domestic servant, thirty-two (nudged down, sheâd soon be thirty-four), boarded the Aurelia in Genoa for a five-week passage to Sydney. (Thirty years later Milenka would discover that a twenty-one-year-old Italian woman on that very voyage, Gilda Sernagiotto, was about to become my mother-in-law.)
Milenka was tall and strong, her brown hair naturally curly. She was shy in a strange land and worked as a housekeeper for doctors and lawyers in the mansions of the cityâs eastern suburbs.
âWe didnât come to Australia to be slaves,â Rajka told her friend, spurring them to strike out on their own.
Both found jobs in food factories. For a time, Milenka rented a room from a family that had several children, whom she cherished and who loved her. Milenka only socialised with other Croatians and went to Mass on Sundays in Surry Hills.
Through friends, she found her way to a lively share house in Newtown and fell in love. Aged thirty-five, she married the lean Croatian landlord, son of a woman from the MustaÄ family of coastal Privlaka, where Bare Lukin had raised the belltower.
Milenka was blessed with a total recall for details. The smuggling days would sit alongside war stories as treasured memories of adventure, flight and survival, told with relish and aplomb, through dramatic pauses and theatrical gestures. The roaming was over. Free from the threat of capture, with a new start in a rich country, the path ahead appeared to be straightforward â honest, legal labouring. The last contraband Milenka carried was me.
2
Love-struck
Ineskaâs eyes were a metallic blue,
Milenka had resented the Finanzaâs arbitrary law- enforcement and now abhorred the way Titoâs party hacks were elevated to positions of authority. Compared with Russia, Yugoslavia was portrayed by some as a workerâs paradise, built on brotherhood and Adriatic majesty. To most Croatians, however, it was oppressive and corrupt, a communist state on the path to ruin. Yugoslavia couldnât even feed its people and relied on the aid, remittances and kickbacks of foreigners on both sides of the Iron Curtain to maintain the semblance of order. In this proletariat idyll, people were voting with their feet.
Looking for a way out of this dead end, fifteen men and women living in Rijeka, mostly from Kali, chipped in and bought a fishing boat. The group found a captain and mate willing to take them under the cover of night across the sea to Italy.
The journey was fraught with danger. The old vessel wasnât up to it. The crew feared capture after the engine failed and abandoned the asylum-seekers. The boat drifted near enough to shore for Italian authorities to bring them into port.
Milenka didnât tell her parents about her escape in advance and never saw them again. She spent almost two years in four different refugee camps, helped by Catholic relief agencies in Italy, including the US National Catholic Welfare Conference. The Italian camps were crowded and those seeking sanctuary were malnourished and vulnerable, especially women.
The two friends, however, found a decent level of comfort due to the church. From photos on the eve of their departure for Australia, Milenka and Rajka appear healthy and hopeful. By the late 1950s, there was a deluge of young escapees out of Croatia to Italy and Austria. Some of these desperate people were repatriated and punished. Milenka and Rajka stuck together and eventually made contact with a Croatian Catholic priest in Sydney, who sponsored their passage to Australia as âNew Settlersâ. In March 1958 the record shows Milenka, a stateless, single, domestic servant, thirty-two (nudged down, sheâd soon be thirty-four), boarded the Aurelia in Genoa for a five-week passage to Sydney. (Thirty years later Milenka would discover that a twenty-one-year-old Italian woman on that very voyage, Gilda Sernagiotto, was about to become my mother-in-law.)
Milenka was tall and strong, her brown hair naturally curly. She was shy in a strange land and worked as a housekeeper for doctors and lawyers in the mansions of the cityâs eastern suburbs.
âWe didnât come to Australia to be slaves,â Rajka told her friend, spurring them to strike out on their own.
Both found jobs in food factories. For a time, Milenka rented a room from a family that had several children, whom she cherished and who loved her. Milenka only socialised with other Croatians and went to Mass on Sundays in Surry Hills.
Through friends, she found her way to a lively share house in Newtown and fell in love. Aged thirty-five, she married the lean Croatian landlord, son of a woman from the MustaÄ family of coastal Privlaka, where Bare Lukin had raised the belltower.
Milenka was blessed with a total recall for details. The smuggling days would sit alongside war stories as treasured memories of adventure, flight and survival, told with relish and aplomb, through dramatic pauses and theatrical gestures. The roaming was over. Free from the threat of capture, with a new start in a rich country, the path ahead appeared to be straightforward â honest, legal labouring. The last contraband Milenka carried was me.
2
Love-struck
Ineskaâs eyes were a metallic blue,
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