Zagreb - The family of Ankica and Grgo Katalinic wanted to build a street specially leading to their house for their 75th wedding anniversary, but local authorities turned the request down, the Jutarnji List daily said Friday.

Ankica, 97, and Grga, 95, live without electricity and tap water in a mountaintop village, reachable only after a several-hour hike on a narrow path. All others in the village Katalinici - after which Grga's family was named - either long-since died or left.

Their son Ante, 60, wanted to finance a road which would allow an ambulance and visitors to drive up Velebit, Croatia's tallest mountain, to the deserted village for their extraordinary jubilee.

But when a hired bulldozer dug in, municipal authorities in Stari Grad, 100 kilometres southwest of Zagreb, intervened and stopped it - the area is a natural reservation and construction is disallowed.

"I'm not asking that anybody pays for this street, our family will collect the money, only that they allow me to build the road," said Ante, who rides a donkey uphill to visit his parents each day.

The couple, on the eve of what some call their "crown-jewel anniversary," have never owned a television set and have not seen moving images for years, since they became too old for several hours of ascending and descending the slopes of Velebit.

Their son asked: "Isn't it a shame that in 321st century two people as old as they live a life unworthy of a human being? When they die, how will we carry them to the cemetery?"

There however are no plans to build, or even allow, a road on Velebit, Jutarnji said. (dpa)