Family Pasic
| Town/City | Melbourne |
|---|---|
| First name | Family |
| Last name | Pasic |
| Country of Origin | Bosnia and Herzegovina |
| Date of Birth | 8/7/1957 |
| Year of Arrival in Australia | 1992 |
| Submitted by | Mirna Pasic |
Story
I was born Mirna (Nina) Kazazic, 8th July 1957 in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. First child of 2 children. My brother is Ervin (Nino) Kazazic. My father was maths professor and my mother was a teacher. They encouraged our education. I have finished Economic Science and my brother Nino became an Aeronautical engineer.
I married my only love Miro Pasic on 23rd July 1980. We have been waiting for this moment for six years. We moved out of our town and worked and lived in Karlovac until 1984. We become proud parents of our daughter Yasmina born 1982 in Karlovac. Our son Goran has been born in 1985 in our town Mostar. We have been working and living in Gornji Vakuf as from 1984 till 1989. Then in 1989 my best friend, my soul mate, my lover and my husband came with news that we are going for work to Australia. He was representative of a Bosnian company in Australia.
This should have been for four years but we spent only two years in this lovely country. Our kids started school here, we made lovely friends and it was very hard for us to go back now that the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina wasn’t good. We could feel this on our skin. Pre-war situation did make changes on high levels. You could feel that if you are not one of ‘them’ you will be sent back to home. Doesn\’t matter if you are Croat, Serbian or Muslim. In that time my mother-in-law was diagnosed with cancer, operated on and became very sick. Therefore we actually been happy to go back and be with our family in that hard time. We started our company known as Enterium. Business was booming and we could not take all jobs offered to us. You could feel tension everywhere in our country but we could not believe that people could go so far and start the war. In fact we still believe that people have not started it; it was just a combination of politics and economic crisis. After Miro’s mother died, we lost his father, just six months after her. And then, just 14 days after he died we had a war in April 1992. We have been in Croatia at that time. Kids stayed with our friends in Split until we finish the jobs in Italy and Slovenia. We could not return to our town where we left my mother by herself.
We decided that we should not be part of a war where no one is winning, where everyone is a loser and would not like to take the hard part of seeing our mixed family and friends to suffer. We made a big decision to come back to Australia in June 1992. My Brother was already here with his family.
It was the worst and the best decision at time. We did not have refugee status and relied on finding jobs. This was a big problem as we have not had a permanent status and did not receive any support. But there was a beautiful future for our kids. We have done all hard work until we finally got status and become Australian Citizens in October 1995. This was special time for us. Allowed us to start working in professional fields.
Our children are well and working now. They both finished university. There were lots of ups and downs in our life but we always say Ð as long as we are together everything is possible. We have proved it. We are very proud to be Australians. Australia is beautiful country.