On the Dalmation Coast

‘Don’t you leave there in a hurry; stay and enjoy my beautiful former country’. So my Serbian friend in Australia had written to me when I told her we were in Dubrovnik – the stunning seaside fortress that rears from the rocky coast of the Adriatic in Croatia. It had of course been part of Yugoslavia until the war which marked the breakup of a country almost as old as Australia (Yugoslavia was first formed in 1918) into a host of new nation states. In contrast to so many ancient fortresses, the