Dida Moje. Dida Moje.

Klapa Morkan belted out songs that tugged on the oldies nostalgic heartstrings. Mladi Dalmatinci paid homage to their ancestral roots with a folkloric dance performance for the ages. But the star of the Blasko Noć ’94—the six-year-old more than five-hundred people crammed into the klub’s dining hall to hear sing, brought the house down with his rendition of Zbogom Blato (Goodbye Blato). But Adam wasn’t done performing. 

On the sly, Buran had taught lijepi (handsome) some other songs. Some, profitable songs. Two dollars for the cheeky one. A five dollar bill for the naughty one. A market garden entrepreneur, Dida advised ‘moj unuk’ (my grandson) to take a positive cash flow position, demanding full payment from the old timers before entertaining them. Word quickly spread through Perth’s Slavic community about onaj mali koji kanta (the little boy who sings) and, before long, my enterprising sibling walked out of Dalies, Yugal, and the WA Yugoslav Club with a smiling Buran—and wads of cash. 

‘Anté. Što čini?’
‘Ništa.’

Dida was right. Nothing compared to sitting in his cellar and sharing a loaf of bread, breaking off chunks of Romano cheese, eating pršut off the bone, and washing down our impromptu meal with his newest batch of homemade vino. When my brothers and I heard ‘Eyyyyyyyyyy, Jadrana! Donesi mi na piće,’ (bring me a drink) we knew that meant running a ‘prst i prst’  (finger and finger) ninety percent vino, ten percent water mix to him in the garden. 

Jake’s Under 13s football coach got the shock of his life when he took a swig from a random drink bottle. When he queried the team at half time as to who the vino-filled drink bottle belonged to, Jake replied, ‘Dida said it would make me play good.’ One-hundred and twenty-one AFL games and his photo hanging alongside Dalies’ AFL greats in the club later, Buran was proven right. 

The Surjan boys or, as almost everyone at Spearwood Dalmatinac referred to us, Buranovi (Buran’s), had an idyllic childhood. We grew up on a rural playground in an urban environment. Our real prize was interacting with Baba Marija and Dida every day. My earliest memories of Buran are that of a bull of a man. I watched Dida throw bačve (barrels) around like they were pillows and, to escape Mother Nature’s fury, I ran to him and took refuge inside his bright yellow cyclone proof raincoat. Standing on Dida’s čizme (gum boots), nothing troubled me. 

One thing puzzled me growing up. Why was it so easy for Buran to get his baseball mitt-sized hands on his grandsons, then subject us to the five o’clock shadow sandpaper face rub of death? Twenty years later, he casually dropped the answer into a dinnertime conversation.

In my family, Friday night zelje is an institution. I thought nothing of snapping broad beans off the vine and eating them raw, but zelje, urgh. It wasn’t the boiled greens and potato meal that I objected to. It was the amount of it on my plate. I wasn’t going to miss out on Baba’s jelly-custard-ice-cream dessert so, while I persevered with Mount Zelje, Buran mopped up his plate, and reminded us ‘po ma caj to, i imat ćeš lijepu djecu (mop that up and you’ll have good looking children). When I look at my nephews and nieces—Zander, Anthony, Ilaria, Isobel, Iver, and Samson Anton, he wasn’t wrong. 

When sport took Jacob and I interstate and, with Adam and Josh periodically working away, I came to appreciate the togetherness Fridays at Baba and Dida’s had delivered. On one of the rare adult occasions everyone was seated around Buran’s table, family members were attempting to one-up each other with our sporting accomplishments. A deadpan Buran looked up from his meal, and stopped everyone in their tracks with the claim ‘Imam 60 metar rekord u Blato,’  (I have the 60 metre record in Blato). Nothing any of us had achieved could compete with Buran’s primary school effort but, at least my sandpaper face rub deliberation had been addressed.

Buran’s Australian story threw curveballs at him. In 1960, he left his newlywed wife, the safety of his home, family, and culture, for a country on the other side of the planet. There were no welcoming committees. He wasn’t given a head start by government agencies. Instead, in oppressive conditions, Dida worked ungodly hours and, was forced to jump through hoops to gain citizenship. Some people tried to break Buran’s spirit by making him feel as if he were an intruder and second class citizen. They failed. My indomitable grandfather got on with the business of building his family a better life.

To a Blaćani, their village is the centre of the universe. But, listening to Dida tell stories of what it felt like to grow up in Blato being constantly hungry was sobering. Years after he embarrassed Mum by following through with his jest to say ‘Kako si, zete?’ (How are you, son-in-law?) the first time he met Dad, Buran told my old man the day he stepped foot in Australia, was the day he never felt hunger again.

I thought I knew what hard work was when I helped pick, pack, clean, sort, top and tail, repack, and load our produce onto the Nissan. When I learned my grandparents pushed a wheelbarrow full of vegetables through a couple of hundred metres of soft sand to the sorting area, I was flabbergasted. Finding out they didn’t lower the tractor’s rotary tumbler into the trough, but hand-washed parsnips and carrots by wiggling wet hessian bags, intensified my appreciation of what Buran and Baba had endured to seed the opportunities my family has enjoyed.

Nothing my relatives and I have accomplished in Australia would have been possible without Barba Antun and Teta Katie’s patronage. On Korčula, opportunities for second-born sons weren’t plentiful. Barba sponsored the nephew he’d never met, then embraced him as a son. The bonds Barba and Teta formed with Baba and Dida are woven into the fabric of our family. Whether a newborn or by marriage, my selfless grandfather welcomed every new addition to our tribe with open arms. 

My sister-in-law didn’t believe Jake when he told her Buran had been practicing, so when they first met, he could receive her speaking in English. He needn’t have bothered. Alison told me she’d never felt more accepted than when Dida wrapped his enormous hands around her and, swallowed her in a loving embrace. She followed her reminiscence by reminding me how moved she was every time she saw Dida’s great-grandchildren derived tears of excitement. That feeling was reciprocated, as my soon to be sister-in-law, Charis, often told me how much her kids looked forward to seeing Big Baba and Big Dida. 

‘Marija moja’  (my Marija) and ‘Jadrana moja’ occupied a special place in Buran’s heart. Nothing could temper my grandfather’s love for the woman he shared his life with. I’d joke with him ‘Dobio si na lutriji Buran,’ (you won the lottery) to which he replied ‘Jesam. Baba je best,’  (I did. Baba is the best). I never doubted his undying devotion to her—because his actions showed me how much Baba meant to him. Nearing the end of his journey, all Dida asked of our family was that we looked after Baba for him. 

If Baba Marija was the love of Buran’s life, Jadrana moja was the apple of his eye. Dida and his little girl shared an extraordinary connection. It was so strong, Buranka’s never lived more than sixty metres away from him. But therein lies the beauty of their relationship. Kindred spirits, they adored each other—because they never let one-another down. Buran’s apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree. Mum never lets any of her boys down.

It’s impossible to ignore growing up being flanked by my grandparents and Uncle Mark. Come rain, hail or shine, I knew I’d hear the flip-flop of his worn thongs, then see his threadbare sweater and short shorts walk by my bedroom window on his way to the garden. Marko moj never wavered in his commitment to helping ease the load on Baba and Dida. Whether it was in the family business, doing odd jobs around their house, or finally delivering Dida the spit he promised to build thirteen years earlier, Uncle Mark was a visible and helpful presence in our intergenerational cooperative. 

My brothers and I each had a unique relationship with Buran. Adam recalls cooking chops or fish with Dida on his smoking homemade firepit. Jacob laughed telling me about how he remembered bouncing around in the Valiant’s seatbelt-less backseat and, Buran asking him for his old skater-boy shoes so he could repurpose them in the garden. Driving to and from the Canning Vale Markets, Dida taught me about supply and demand and, how it related to pricing his vegetables. Moreover, Buran was never short of suggesting there was a better way for me to do the job he had asked me to help him with. But of the four of us, Mali Buran, who never stopped laughing at Dida’s unique sayings, had the closest connection with him. 

From his earn one dollar, bank fifty cents and put one cent away for a rainy day financial prudence, to his flannelette fashion choices, Buran is the role model Josh has chosen to emulate. The man who singlehandedly gave us opportunities our ancestors could only have dreamed of, Josh honours by exhibiting his best traits: honesty, loyalty, and generosity. When Buran paraded my little brother through the streets of Blato, he was showing the world how proud he was of the boy he helped raised to become a man.

Selfishly, I’m glad Buran entrusted Josh with the preservation of his winemaking legacy. As long as we have a flagon of Dida’s vino on the table, Buran’s essence will always be with us. 

I knew my socks and sandals wearing, lawn bowls loving grandfather was loved by the Spearwood Dalmatinac community. What I didn’t understand, was the breadth of Buran’s impact outside of his beloved Spearavood. My jet setting grandparents did more than take their grandsons on tractor joyrides around the market garden. They travelled to exotic locations and, spread their life philosophy and offered in person advice to family members and friends around the globe. 

The sheer number of people who have offered my family their condolences and, who have travelled from interstate to attend his funeral (Mum has asked me to give a special mention to our cousin from Sydney, Mary) is a testament to Dida’s cheeky and, glass half full disposition. 

There are too many people for me to individually name but, for everyone who enriched Buran’s life, please know, he valued you all. 

I’ve only seen my Dad tear up twice in my life. The first was at Baba Lucija’s funeral in 2019. The second time was on September 28. Buran was more than a father-in-law to my Dad. When he trusted his most precious possession to my father, he never stopped thanking Dad for giving Mum the life she deserved. That’s the type of man my magnanimous Dida was, or, as Josh put it, ‘He was just a good bloke.’