Marija Ruljancich, Australia’s second-oldest living person, dies at 110
The Gerontology Research Group is saddened to report news that Mrs. Marija Ruljancich, the second-oldest living person in Australia and the oldest living Croatian-born person, sadly died in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia on 18 May 2024 at the age of 110 years, 339 days.
Marija Ruljancich was born in the small village of Lorci, island of Vis, Split-Dalmatia County, Austria-Hungary (present-day Croatia) on 14 June 1913. At the age of five, she witnessed the effects of the 1918 Great Influenza pandemic as it ravaged the island that she lived on. Her family owned a wine business, but it suffered when a disease destroyed the family’s vineyards.
She was married at the age of 19 to Ivan Ruljancich, who had returned to the island of Vis after six years away in Western Australia working in the forests as a tree feller. In 1944, she and her sister Dina and Marija’s husband Ivan (known as John) fled the island Vis to Australia during World War II (after a 3-year refugee camp stopover in Egypt). Her husband Ivan died in 1991 at the age of 88.
She became the oldest known living Croatian-born person following the death of 107-year-old Marija Bibulic on 16 April 2021.
Following the death of 111-year-old Catherina van der Linden 26 January 2024, she became the second-oldest living person in Australia, behind 111-year-old Olga Abate (born 20 May 1913 in Italy) of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
