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"We are grateful to the agency for our introduction and assis-tance in Kiev and Australia.
Tina's adaptability and quick learning has meant we have had very few problems so therefore we have required very little assistance from you since Tina came to Australia. However prior to this, you were invaluable to both of us, especially in Kiev. Without Val & Era's assistance, it would have been nigh impossible to have met and brought Tina to Australia."
D. & T L - Mackay (1996)
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THE NORTH WEST 11

WEEKEND

Catalogue love posted air male

Partner mart: Iryna Torchinska and Val Girilovich with their folder of potential Russian brides. Picture: Paul Scambier
click to enlarge

By NADINE ALLAN

"ATTRACTIVE, perfect brides by mail. Russian and Ukraine ladies want to be introduced to Australian men", read the advert published this week in The North West Star.
There was no way this ad wasn't going to catch interest among Mount Isa's male population!
It was placed by Val Girilovitch and his Ukraine financee Era Torchinskaya who have spent the past four days in Mount Isa interviewing a surprising number of local men who bit the bait for a new brand of foreign wife.
I guess it is little wonder.
This "cupid" concept is kind of curious. A single guy peruses a catalogue for a woman who catches his eye and then has her "mailed" over.
That is the most disparaging and possibly the most common way of viewing this marriage market scenario. Unfortunately it is also the concept that dogs Val just about everywhere he goes.
Sure, he still gets a lot of calls from interested men but outsiders constantly judge him as someone who is exploiting lonely.
Australian men and even worse desperate Russian and Ukraine women who are so desirous of a new life outside their crisis-torn homeland they will consider marriage to someone sight unseen.
There is no denying Val's enter-prise is a fertile one but the Siberian-born former farm manager says there is a far higher and more noble gain than the obvious monetary one.
"These are my country people and I will help as many of them as I can", Val said.
His fiancee, Era, is a classic example of someone given the rare opportunity of life outside the depressed republic.

Val met her in Kiev during his June 1993 working holiday in Russia and Ukraine and returned to get her in April of this year.
Val, who is fluent in Russian, said he returned to his homeland for the first time in 27 years with the express purpose of establishing trade links in the building industry.
While there, a Brisbane business associate for whom he was interpreting in Moscow told him to consider the viability of a Russian/Australian introduction agency.
Initially Val said he baulked at the prospect because of all the negatives associated with the industry, but he did an about-face when he stumbled upon a government-run introduction agency in the Black Sea resort town of Krasnodar.
"They said they had women on their books who would dearly love to get into a relationship with a man in another country. It was suggested to me that I set up a branch in Australia".
When Val returned to Australia in November 1993 he immediately registered the Commercial Introduction Agency in Sydney and launched himself with an advertisement in the Sydney papers for Russian and Ukraine brides by mail. Since then he has been hard pressed to keep up with Australian demand.
Initially he was virtually an Australian agency for the government-sponsored agencies in Krasnodar and Kiev but they could not keep up with the Australian agency's demands. Val established his own network of contacts who have since banded together to become five agencies across Russia and the Ukraine. There is also an agency in Redcliffe. Brisbane.
In the beginning, the Russian and Ukraine agencies had to rely on word of mouth because 70 years of fear had made the people understandably wary of foreigners promising happiness at a price.
But by the time Val went back to pick up Era, there were reams of applications from women aged 19 to 38 hopeful of a new life in "happy" Australia - as it is billed there.
Val now has six photo albums of available brides and 70 per cent of those women are friends of Era's.
Most of the women are well educated with university backgrounds, a third of them speak English, and Val says they are all fully aware of the fact that not all of them will walk into domestic bliss in an Australian household.
Era said (via Val): "No matter how bad it is over here, it is luxury compared to what they had grown accustomed to in Russia and the Ukraine which now has its people living in conditions 10 times worse than Russia.
"Even if they come out and have to live in a caravan park it will be 100 per cent better that what they are used to there."
In Kiev some women virtually work around the clock to make ends meet.
A nurse would earn a maximum of $US10 a month. And, although it costs the women the price of a soft drink to apply with the agencies, a fast post letter to Australia in order to correspond with any suitor costs them $US25 which is the equivalent of 10 weeks' pay.
Sometimes Val is able to help the women out financially through his contacts there.
On the home front, Val said the men applicants who fall into three categories - young, hard workers unable to meet women; the elderly and the professionals - were charged a "modest" amount for an application and consultation during which time they could look at female applications, photos and biographical notes attached.
There was a further fee for the introduction and if Val is needed as an interpreter of letters or tele-phone calls.
Val stressed: "I do not bring the women out here. My job is just to introduce them. I am acting as an intermediary only".
He leafs through the male and female prerequisites and then upon request shows the Russian woman and the Australian applicant where possible photos and sometimes videos of each other.
If interest is sparked he then introduces the two and then the ball is basically in their сourt to pursue the relationship.
He has already played matchmaker in dozens of relationship and there are now more than 10 mainly Queensland suitors dying to get their Russian and Ukraine brides through immigration. The women are allowed in on a fiancee visa but must be married within six months of arrival.

Friday. November 11,1994 Page 15