Prvić Luka
Prvić Luka is one of two small villages on the island of Prvić in the Šibenik Archipelago. To the east, Prvić is 1km from the mainland. To the west is the uninhabited island of Tijat, north are the mainland towns, Vodice, and Tribunj and south is the islet of Lupac and Zlarin island beyond that.
The first inhabitants of the area where Prvić Luke stands today were Benedictine monks who were living there by the mid 1200s and probably earlier. They were followed by the Franciscan monks in the mid 1400s who built the church. As attacks by the Turkish armies intensified, people from the mainland came and settled around the large bay that was then known as the Bay of St Mary (Uvala Sv Marije). Prvić Luka was the parish centre for Šepurina, Kaprije and Žirje until the mid 1800s. All birth, baptism, marriage and death records were kept in the parish offices. The walled cemetery adjacent to the church was used by both Luka and Šepurine until the mid 1800s when new cemeteries were constructed.
The first emigrants from Prvić Luka went to the United States in the 1890s. A decade later, men went looking for opportunities in southern Africa, Western Australia, Broken Hill and Far North Queensland. It’s likely that the first people from Prvić Luka to disembark in Fremantle were brothers, Šimun and Bare Bumbak in 1901, followed by the Vladić brothers, Ivan and Ante in 1905, a third brother, Krste along with Mate Rokić, Stipe Dobra and Jere Stupin all arrived in 1908. The first women were likely, the wives of Ivan and Ante Vladić, Tomica (nee Lučev) and Jaka (nee Skroza) who came to WA around 1910 and Danica Rodin who disembarked in 1912. Danica was Šimun Bumbak’s niece.
Before World War 1, there were substantial numbers of temporary migrant workers from Prvić Luka working on the goldfields or cutting timber in the south-west of Western Australia. A few, such as the Vladić brothers worked near Koorda where they eventually purchased farmland and Lovre Gradiška, worked in Carnarvon. A few men were interned during World War 1and more permanent migration began in the 1920s. Most people from Prvić Luka settled, or eventually settled, around Perth.
The largest groups of migrants from Prvić Luka, and their descendants, who live in Western Australia carry the surnames: Bumbak, Jareb, Lučev, Rodin, and Vladić.
Smaller numbers of Prvić Luka migrants in WA have or had the following surnames: Čače, Dobra, Gradiška, Jurlin, Lakoš, Livić, Parun, Rokić, Stupin, Santić, Škalabrin, Štampalija, and Zanze.
Lino Franich