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From Croatia to the Canefields: a love story | ABC Conversations Podcast
Posted
December 13, 2024
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December 13, 2024
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51:59Now PlayingA village named Blato sits on a little island off the Dalmatian Coast of Croatia.
It's a pretty place, with ancient stone houses crowding into a valley framed by the sea.
A boy named Mladen, known as Laddie, left the island as a child.
He grew up on a cane farm in Cassowary Valley in Far North Queensland.
When he was 28, he wrote back to the village seeking a bride, and a girl named Marija answered his letter.
She sent a studio portrait and a note all the way back to Cassowary Valley.
The pair began exchanging letters, then Marija decided to take the biggest risk of her life.
The government of the former Yugoslavia required her to marry to leave the country.
So she became a 'proxy bride', with one of Mladen's cousins as the stand-in groom.
Within two years, and after a lot of paperwork, she was on a ship to Australia to meet the husband she'd never seen in person, and to begin an entirely new life.
Further Information
Originally broadcast September 2021
The Girl Who Left was published by Wild Dingo Press
2023 update:
Debra Gavranich will be appearing at the Cairns Tropical Writers Festival on February 26
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