"Love Immigrant" — that is my explanation for moving from the other side of the world to a small village outside of Dubrovnik, Croatia almost 20 years ago. I fell in love with a very tall, dark and handsome Croatian man and together we have our two amazing sons.
One stage of my career in the '90s was working as an Aromatherapist onboard cruise ships, which is also where I met my husband who was working in the Engine Dept. We married in 1995 and we continued working onboard cruise ships until I became pregnant in 1999.
I chose to have my son in Australia as it was my first child and my Croatian language skills were non-existent (unfortunately my Croatian is still BAD).
In early 2000 our Millenium boy Jon was born in Mandurah, a seaside town south of Perth. Nikša was still working at sea so we decided to move to Brisbane to be closer to my brothers and family.
In 2001 our second son Jak was born and Nikša took an absence of leave from ships, but always wanted to move "Home".
So in 2003, we moved to Župa just 15 minutes south of historical Dubrovnik, our boys were almost 2 and 3 years old at the time.
Things were very different here then. We arrived in August and our "home" was yet to be completed, so we moved into the bottom floor of a family home nearby to where we were building, me with no Croatian and the owners with no English. Nikša left to go back to sea 2 months later, the summer was over and my new life was about to begin......