The year 1871 began on a sorrowful note. Holiday festivities came to an abrupt end when it became known on Monday 2 January that His Excellency, Colonel Blackall, Governor of Queensland, had died. With this news a universal gloom settled on the entire population of the fledgling colony. Colonel Samuel Wensley Blackall had been in […] Read more…
This story is a tribute to my father, Petar Salečić (also known as Peter Salecich), who was born in a small Croatian village on this day, October 16, 99 years ago. It’s an abridged version of the eulogy I delivered at his funeral service that was held in Brisbane (Queensland, Australia), on April 17, 2009. […] Read more…
In 1958, at 36 years of age, Anđelka Salečić (nee Tomašić) left her European homeland and all that was familiar to her to make a new life for herself and her family in Australia. For the next 30 years she called Australia home. A New Australian, she came to love her adopted land, and never […] Read more…
I never knew my aunt, my mother’s sister. She died long before I was born. There are no photographs of her, so I can only imagine what she looked like. But I do have something that belonged to her. It’s a lock of hair. A carefully preserved lock of hair, fastened with a tiny silk […] Read more…
On Thursday my husband and I attended a funeral. It was the funeral of Brian Edwin Sara, friend, much-loved brother in the Lord and member of St Andrew’s Anglican Church South Brisbane. The church was packed, as family members, parishioners, friends and representatives of the scouting movement and Brian’s tenpin bowling club gathered to honour […] Read more…