British woman seeks long-lost family in NZ, 40 years after newspaper ad sparked a reunion
Tuesday, 7 July 2020
In 1980, a recently emigrated British couple living in New Zealand placed an ad in the Great Yarmouth Mercury in hopes of reconnecting with estranged family still living in Britain.
Their plight was successful. Ron Carter, reading the paper one morning, realised it was him they were looking for and contacted the paper.
The man who placed the ad was Ron’s cousin, and he and his wife, and their daughter Bronwyn and her husband Greg, all travelled to England to visit that same year.
Forty years later, Carter’s daughter Marie Young is doing the same in hopes of reconnecting with Bronwyn and Greg, whose contact details were lost when her parents died years ago.
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Young and her two sisters were only children at the time of the visit, but she remembered the time fondly.
“It was really lovely,” she said. “My mum kept in touch.”
But her mother died in 2009, after a fall which broke her hip and shoulder. “Dad died two weeks later of a broken heart.”
Young wasn’t able to find the contact details for Greg and Bronwyn or their parents, when going through their parents’ things.
“Bronwyn and Greg, we don't even know their surname,” she said.
She did know, however, that the couple was in the process of adopting a little Romanian boy when they visited.
“I think Bronwyn and Greg would probably be in their 60s now, and their little Romanian boy late 30s, or early 40s.”
She hoped someone reading this would know the couple and they would get in touch, just like her father did in Yarmouth all those years ago.
Young visited New Zealand for the first time earlier this year. “I went to Wellington, and I would have loved to meet up with Bronwyn and Greg.”
“I was desperately trying to find them when I was over in New Zealand in March. I got trapped in your lockdown,” she laughed.
She arrived back in England in April, but was in the process of applying for jobs in New Zealand, having always held a desire to live here.
It had always been top of the list of places to visit, and when she was diagnosed with breast cancer four years ago, she thought it was time to start ticking things off.
Young’s parents were Ron and Rosemary Carter, and they had three daughters Sally, Sara, and Marie.
“When they visited us our address was 5 Middlestone Cl, Gorleston, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk.”
- If you know Bronwyn, Greg, or their son, please get in touch with The Dominion Post and we can connect you with Marie. Email capitalday@dompost.co.nz.