Rob Klaric entered a Mosman op shop to buy a book on Tuesday morning, but it was two old picture frames sitting on the ground that stole his attention.
He didn’t know why at first, but then the penny dropped: he was the young man holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa in the first picture, and it was his wife Leonie in the other. The photos were taken on the couple’s first overseas trip in 1988 and were lost during a house move in 1994.
Rob and Leonie Klaric, posing with their pictures from 1988. Credit: Louise Kennerley
“I thought I was hallucinating. I couldn’t believe my eyes,” Klaric said. “I was shaking – one of the workers asked me if I was all right.”
The op shop staff couldn’t believe it either at first, and even they weren’t sure who had kept them for the past three decades.
Rob’s picture retailed for $12, while Leonie’s went for $8 – pricing Leonie put down to her husband, aged 58, being “more vintage” than she. Klaric forked out the money for the frames, which he called “the best bargain I’ve ever found”.
The photograph of Leonie holds special significance for the family. In the picture, she stands outside the home of Klaric’s late mother, who migrated from Italy to Australia after World War II, in her village just north of Venice.
The couple lost the photos when they moved house in 1994.Credit: Louise Kennerley
During wartime, Klaric’s family sheltered Allied soldiers in the barn of their home, metres from where Leonie stood in the picture, when the area was occupied by Nazi Germany.
Klaric has visited his mother’s home several times, including with his daughter, whose memory of the place has been jogged by her father’s latest purchase.
“I thought, ‘Oh wow, that looks like my mum’s backyard, but that couldn’t be ours’,” Klaric said. “I looked closer and said, ‘my god, this is my bride’.”
Once Klaric processed what was in front of him, he messaged his wife, opting not to give too much away and to surprise her once he arrived home.
Leonie, who was busy working as a support counsellor for Lifeline, initially shooed her husband away. Once she had a moment to inspect the picture, she, too, couldn’t believe her eyes.
“She kept looking at the frames and thought it was a joke,” Klaric said. “We’re both pretty thrilled that we’ve been reunited with them.”
The pictures now hang in their Mosman home, representing memories that were once hazy but that now will never be forgotten.
“It’s my mum’s birthplace; my grandparents were born there, and all the stories that come from that backyard, it’s just an iconic photo for all the reasons that only a family would know,” Klaric said.
“I’d have to think my mum had a hand in this too, looking down from heaven.”
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