My Parents

Julijana & Joseph

My parents celebrated 60 years of Marriage on 31st March, 2007. What an awesome achievement. You can read my contribution to the booklet I created for them especially for this occasion which included my poem Ode to 60 Years of Marriage and my Thank You letter to them.

My Mother

Let me tell you about my mother first as she was the primary disciplinarian. My mother is the eldest of three children and has two siblings - both male. My maternal grandparents and my mother's two brothers also migrated to Australia in 1957, five years after my parent's arrival.

My mother's forte was her home and her children and she thrived in her domain. My father left all the home related decisions up to her and she was our interior decorator. Funnily enough, the greeen colour of my car is almost the same tone as the green walls in my parent's house! We always had beautiful home cooked meals, even the ones where she claimed she had "swindled". My mother could do all the things women of her generation were expected to know such as: cooking, sewing, needlework, darning socks, knitting and crochet. We were taught to be frugal and not wasteful and to appreciate everything we had. And she inspired us to be the best we could be in all our endeavours.

She had an ingenious imagination when it came to dealing with her daughters when we misbehaved or fought with one another. My mother invented a unique way of working out if we were lying or not. If she strongly suspected one of us was lying about something but she wasn't 100% sure, she used a system where she touched our nose to tell. If our nose was soft, we were lying and if our nose was hard, we were telling the truth! We had no idea that when our nose was "soft" her finger was actually pressing the soft tip of our nose and when our nose was "hard", she was pressing the bony part close to the end of our nose. It was simply a matter of moving her finger slightly up or down our nose accordingly. If she thought we were lying, she would press the soft part of our nose and we would immediatley blush with embarrassment at having been caught out. The blushing was all the confirmation she needed. Brilliant concept and it worked!

My Father

My father also comes from a family of three siblings of which he is the eldest. He has a sister and a brother. My father's younger brother migrated to Australia four years later but his sister did not come out here until many years later when I was already in my 20's.

This photo is of my father during his stay in the camp at Bonegilla in NSW where all migrants were transferred on first arrival in Australia which was in 1952. 

My father is a carpenter by trade and has many skills which came in handy to his family of four daughters, especially me. Doing a Fine Arts course meant I needed an art box to carry my drawing and painting equipment in. My father was most obliging and made me a beautiful bright red wooden briefcase shaped box. Whatever my father makes, is always exceptionally well put together - he never cuts corners with his carpentry. My friends were most envious.

During the Second World War when my father was in his mid to late teens, he joined the Partisans to protect his country.