Monday, 6^th June, 11; Pula to Brioni

We arrive at the little port of Brijuni (Brioni) at about 2 pm and decide to rent an electronic buggy to take us, and our camera equipment, around the island. It is a warm and sunny day despite a storm being forecast. The main island is only about two miles long and cars are not permitted.

The islands have an interesting history; in 1893 Herr Paul Kuppleweiser, an Austrian steel magnate, purchased them. Up to this time, they had been uninhabited on account of being malarial. The new owner bought them for a song and immediately sought the best available advice as to how to rid the islands of malaria. Recent work in London had identified the cause as a mosquito, Anopheles, and so Kuppleweiser set about draining the fresh water lakes and planting eucalyptus trees. His energies were rewarded and the islands were rid of the dangerous insects. He invested heavily in building hotels and other infrastructure in order to create a top line resort. He put money into marketing and by ensuring that the place became fashionable, garnered excellent press coverage. The cream of European society flocked to his new resort.

After the First World War, the islands were ceded by Austria to Italy. The Italians permitted the Kuppelweisers to retain their ownership and, after the father died, his son Karl took over. He borrowed extensively to develop the place further but, with the financial crash of 1929, went bankrupt and lost everything. He committed suicide and the islands became the property of the state.

After the Second World War, the victorious partisan leader, Josip Tito, became President and dictator of communist Yugoslavia; he decided to make Brijuni his private playground and the seat of government for the summer months. He loved the islands and built a number of residences for himself, his ministers and his guests. He liked to show off the place and entertained a galaxy of world leaders here using the island to host the inaugural session of his non-allied movement with Nasser and Nehru as his initial partners. As well as politicians, he loved to entertain film stars, especially attractive female ones; he hosted shooting parties and stocked the island with game. His passions were young women, photography, wine making and shooting but most of all he loved power and that gave him ready access to all the others. Tito was estranged from his third and last wife, Jovanka, in 1977; they were never reconciled. He died of a gangrenous ulcer in 1980. His beloved Yugoslavia and its communist regime lasted another nine years, finally falling apart in 1989, riven asunder by the poison of Balkan nationalisms and by the inherent flaws in the economic and political systems.

We have no idea what to expect from Brioni and are pleasantly surprised; the island is green and lush with a variety of mature trees and woodland, some large open grassy spaces teeming with fallow deer. There is a 18-hole golf course that despoils the natural beauty of the island but no doubt is enjoyed by many and an unsightly wildlife park with the remains of Tito’s extensive collection of unhappy looking wild animals, mostly donated by his non-aligned buddies.

The best bits are the areas left relatively untouched by man. There are areas of maquis where the myrtle bush thrives scenting the island paths with its delicious fragrance. Hares run freely everywhere seeming unconcerned by the presence of man. There doesn’t appear to be much birdlife except a multitude of mewing seagulls and some crows both in noisy disputation with each other. Tito’s villas are off-limits being still occupied by government ministers. One of the chief glories of the NP, so we are told, is the marine environment but as no one is allowed access, we cannot judge.

The whole island has the air of a rich man’s private estate, a deer park with picturesque ruins and no inhabitants other than staff. There are three outstanding ruins that we visited. First, an exquisite early Christian basilica of the 6^th C AD – we caught it flooded by golden evening light that filtered through the columns of the nave and apse leaving a patchwork of light and shadow across the old stones. The carved capitols are decorated with early Christian symbols now worn and faded. The little chapel sits in a hollow in a romantic glade of fir trees. No one was around to spoil the aura of calm and tranquility of this special place.

By the shore, on either side of an inlet, are the ruins of a roman palace complex with baths, cisterns, olive press and extensive buildings, so luxurious and extensive that archeologists have suggested it might even have been an Imperial summer residence; probably the first but definitely not the last autocrat to claim the island for his own.

Close to Tito’s villa lies a walled and fortified Kastrum of the Byzantine era. The Byzantines were great imperialists and sea traders who were the dominant power in the region after the fall of the Roman Empire until the rise of the Venetians – from 6^th C to 13^th C AD. They clearly had enemies for they chose a hidden cove in which to build their settlement and fortified it with a substantial stone retaining wall still standing about three meters above the ground for its entire length. The walls enclose a large settlement of houses and workshops. Grapes were pressed here into wine and maybe olives too; there are great earthenware storage jars sunk into pits in the ground to contain the produce. It is the only settlement from this era that we have seen on this trip; so often Byzantine remains are overlaid by settlement of a more recent date. Their basilicas remain; places of Christian worship are often inviolate while other structures fall.

The wonderful evening light affords us some great shots of the island’s scenic beauties and wildlife. We return to Kalani after six hours of filming exhausted but well pleased.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011; Brioni to Pula

This is our first wet and rainy day since the voyage began. It started out overcast with threatening black clouds and about lunchtime, the heavens opened. The only things of interest that we are able to film today are Tito’s gleaming Cadillac from 1955 and an exhibition of photographs of the great statesman. We see him kissing babies and travelling the world on his “peace missions” to non-allied nations such as India at about the same time that Indira Ghandi launched her unprovoked attack on Goa – another diplomatic success then? Other peace-lovers he palled-up to included Col Gaddafi; Castro; Ho Chi Min and Sophia Loren – and she was quite a-piece.

It seems that the beloved leader had all the necessary accoutrements; a police state, no press freedom, schoolchildren brainwashed to revere him like a god and a network of secret gulags for dissidents. Many people here still remember him with affection including those who put together this sickeningly uncritical exhibition that does great disservice to Brijuni and the National Parks of Croatia who administer the island.

People tell us that everyone in his day had a job and was allowed to travel, indeed that is true; as if working for a living and being allowed to go abroad were some wonderful benefit denied to the rest of mankind. Tito oversaw an economy based on sleight of hand, like all communist command economies, it could not be sustained and ended up as bankrupt as the political philosophy that spawned it.

We get back to the boat to learn from Captain Tim that we were aground. The port, administered by the National Park, had permitted our vessel to tie up in a berth with insufficient depth. Not satisfied with endangering our boat, on being informed of their error, the lady in the office offered no word of apology and made us pay none-the-less. The standards of customer relations so dear to the socialists everywhere are evidently still alive in the new Croatia.