Tony Šantić
Tony Santic-Siketa was born on the island of Lastovo, Croatia and came to Australia with his family in 1958 when he 6 years of age. His parents settled in Geelong, Victoria for the next 8 years before Tony & his mother moved to Port Lincoln.
Tony started with a leaky boat fishing for the prized orange roughie in Tasmania, then gained initial success in tuna fishing at Port Lincoln. Times were exceedingly tough in the early 1990s, when tuna quotas were reduced twice, sending a number of related businesses into financial hardship and shutting down others. It was a struggle for Tony to prevent the bank evicting him, his wife and their five children from their Port Lincoln home only 12 years ago. Tuna farming turned around the economics of tuna fishing about seven years ago, thus reversing the fortunes of the Santic family. Now Tony's Tuna International is the second biggest tuna farming operation in Port Lincoln. With better times in the tuna industry, in 1997, Tony decided to pursue his interest in horses and racing, which, at first, was just a hobby but is now a business.
The colours of his forebears' countries (Croatia) gave him the colours for his livery—royal blue and white stars and red and white checks. Tony went to New Zealand to buy a mare. However, he came home with 30 horses, and it has gone on from there. Now he has 60 horses either racing or preparing to race, and 50 mares in foal. Makybe Diva came from England, where Tony bought an in-foal brood mare called Tugela at the Tattersall sale. The subsequent foal, a filly, failed to attract a bid at Newmarket, so Tony decided to bring her to Australia and eventually sent her to David Hall. Tony asked his staff at his Port Lincoln office to name the foal. The women took the first two letters of each of their Christian names and Makybe Diva was born—thanks to Maureen Dellar, Kylie Bascomb, Belinda Groske, Dianne Tonkin and Vanessa Parthenis. Tony's base for his horse racing business is Smytzer's Park near Geelong in Victoria. The name 'Smytzer' owes a lot to Australian humour. The story goes that fellow fisherman Sime Sarin working with Tony on a tuna poling boat in the early days of tuna fishing coined the name for Tony's car, an old Valiant Pacer or Bitzer, hence `Smytzer'. In August 2005, Makybe Diva was named Australian Champion Racehorse of the Year at award ceremonies in Melbourne. She was also awarded the titles of Most Popular Racehorse and Champion Stayer (over 2200m). On October 22, 2005, Makybe Diva won the 2040m W S Cox Plate at Melbourne's Moonee Valley racecourse. With this victory, Makybe Diva became the first horse in Australasian racing history to claim two Melbourne Cups and a Cox Plate.