My only wish was that we had tried to make contact earlier

Judy Wilkie

Back in the late 1950's early 1960's we met up with a chap, Neville, my husband Don worked with.   He was from England, and they hit it off straight away.   After a while his fiancée, Anne, arrived in Australia and we all got along very well.    When they married, I was asked to be her Matron on Honour.

We all spent many happy times together and eventually their son Simon was born.   I was asked to be his Godmother, of which I was thrilled to accept.  

After an illness in Neville's family, Anne went back to England and when Neville could tie up all the loose ends, he too returned to the UK.    We kept in touch for a couple of years and then - nothing.   We thought of them often and wondered what had happened to them.

Eventually we bought our computer and connected to the internet.   Don kept asking me to look up "White Pages" to see if we could find Anne and Neville.    I had a few attempts, and after getting four (4) addresses we were disconnected from that site with a request from the site to find our friends - for a price.

Decided to write a letter to these four people and sent them off, with the hope that one may be them, or perhaps a relative who could put us in touch again.

About a week later when we opened our emails there was the one we were waiting for - it read "Bingo, Yippee, you hit pay dirt", we had found our friends after a silence of about 40 years.   Unfortunately Neville had passed away the previous year, which saddened us.   But we were so happy to find Anne again, and find out that the dear little Godson I had has just had his 41st birthday.   They ended up with four children, and quite a few grandchildren.  

Anne's comment on her first email was "I can't tell you how delighted I was to read your letter, in fact I cried with joy.   If only Nev had been with me, he so wanted us to get in contact again.   This is the beginning of something really great.   I actually feel young and giddy with happiness."   Of course with words like that, I shed tears myself of sadness and happiness.

Anne and Neville had a trip out to Australia just a couple of years back to visit family and friends.   They had her brother in Perth and Nev's brother in Brisbane searching the internet, and making telephone calls trying to contact us to no avail.  We had moved from Melbourne to Mackay in Queensland, and having a silent telephone number, made it very difficult to find us.

It was wonderful to catch up again after so long, and we now keep in touch regularly via the email.   We are now looking forward to Anne coming out to Australia and visiting us - hopefully this year.

My only wish was that we had tried to make contact earlier, but just did not know how to attack the problem until the internet opened up the opportunity of which was are very thankful.