Katica (Katie) Zaknich Maxwell

Story

When we arrived at school, we could speak two words and they were, ‘yes\’ and ‘no\’, but didn\’t know when to use them. The other Slav girls attending the school were strictly instructed not to translate for us. That was really difficult. People ask me how long it took to speak English. There was no time. It just happened. But we never felt isolated. You just had to do it.

Maria and I were thirteen and twelve when mum had our twin brothers. We weren\’t allowed to visit the hospital because you had to be sixteen to go into the maternity ward. Mum never wore make-up so she looked young while we tried to make ourselves look older, so we could go to the hospital and visit her and the twins: that was difficult.

Mum was home with the babies and dad was the only bread-winner, so we had to work to help out. You just worked really hard to make ends meet although it didn\’t seem hard at the time; everybody had to pull their weight.

I used to cry when dad would say to me that I would end up marrying a freckled faced Australian because a lot of my friends were Australian. So to me this was really, really strange and I certainly didn\’t want a husband that looked like that! But guess what happened? And he\’s just beautiful!

Marrying an Aussie has made my situation a bit different. I still speak Croatian with mum and dad. It would have been lovely to have been able to teach both my children and my husband Croatian but, it was just so difficult, and as the children got older. My children can understand what the family conversation is about. They know lots of words but, as far as speaking it, no. But we get by.

As children you don\’t question what\’s happening about the move and we were sad I guess, to leave the family over there, but it\’s been great and Broken Hill has been wonderful to us. I wouldn\’t want to be anywhere else. I think we\’ve been very lucky. I think we\’ve been very blessed.

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