Mario Despoja

The prize money enabled him to buy a block of land on which he built a house and to attend University to obtain a bachelor's degree with an honours thesis on Yugoslav history.

[3] In addition to operating the unofficial Croatian Embassy, Despoja has worked in the Australian Commonwealth's Department of Aboriginal Affairs and as a real estate agent.

[5] Then, on 29 November 1977, Yugoslavia's National Day, the Croatian community in Australia opened its "Embassy" on Canberra Avenue, Forrest, with Despoja as the "chargé d'affaires".

On 6 June 1979, two Commonwealth policemen delivered a letter from the Attorney-General, Peter Durack, warning that the Government would begin legal action in two weeks unless Mario Despoja provided certain undertakings.

Despoja's considered response was to hold teleconferences around Australia with other Croatian community leaders over the following weekend before taking the matter to the "Embassy's" lawyers.

[11] Despoja's response to the court order was to resign as "chargé d'affaires" and commence as the "Embassy's" "special adviser in non-diplomatic and consular matters".

[14] The next election for the Croatian National Council was held about the same time and found Mario Despoja receiving the most votes among the 93 international candidates contesting 30 positions.

[15] Despoja next appeared before the English-speaking public as Adviser, Foreign Relations Department, to the Croatian National Congress (Australasia) (sic), which conveyed its point of view on Tito's Yugoslavia through an advertisement in The Canberra Times on 1 May 1980.

Despoja's "diplomatic" career had ended by October 1982 when the first of many property advertisements featuring him as the real estate agent appeared in The Canberra Times[23] An admirer summed up his contribution ten years later, when she wrote to the Editor of The Canberra Times that, "People may have short memories, especially in the political arena, but history has already marked the name of Mario Despoja as one of the champions of the 20th century fight for Croatian democracy".

[24] On 21 June 1995, Mario Despoja watched Croatia's first elected president, Franjo Tudjman open his nation's official embassy in Canberra.