In a remarkable set of coincidences, long lost family connections have been re-established after an Australian couple visited Pembroke Dock Heritage Centre.

Jeanine Belbin and her husband, John, who live in Victoria, were following the family trail of both Jeanine’s mother and father.

“My mother was Sheila Frances Callender, who lived at 26 Clarence Street,” recalled Jeanine.

“She married a Royal New Zealand Air Force airman, Sergeant Charles Henry Massey, in 1955. My dad flew in Sunderland flying boats.

“Mum went out to New Zealand to join my father and I was born in Fiji in November 1956.”

Tragically, Jeanine’s mother died two days after her daughter was born. Jeanine’s father re-married and had two more children.

Jeanine knew very little about her Pembroke Dock family except the home address, her grandmother’s name - Violet Meta Callender - and the name of a young relative, Eileen.

The coincidences began when Jeanine and John booked into Lovesgrove Guest House, near Pembroke Dock. Hearing of the local connections owner John Kilcoyne immediately contacted the Heritage Centre and a visit was arranged. There the couple met Trustees Martin Cavaney and John Evans. Martin used to live in Clarence Street and within a short time his local contacts proved successful, tracking down the Eileen whom Jeanine remembered.

Martin said to a surprised Eileen: “If you were formerly Eileen Callender your first cousin, whom you have never met, is over in the Heritage Centre waiting to meet you!”

Soon after, Jeanine and John were meeting up with Eileen - now Mrs Keith Hulbert and still living in Clarence Street - and the two cousins began catching up on 60 years of family history. And among family photographs Eileen produced was one of Eileen herself with Jeanine’s parents on their wedding day.

More was to follow as John Evans’ detailed researches into Sunderland flying boats at Pembroke Dock brought more family information - a newspaper report of Jeanine’s parents’ marriage, at Pembroke Register Office in April 1955. Just two days later Charles bid farewell to his new bride and left on a Sunderland heading for New Zealand.

Jeanine added: “We had already been to the Registrar’s office in Haverfordwest and obtained copies of my mother’s birth certificate and of the wedding certificate and so we were very pleased with what we had discovered.

“Then to make contact with my cousin Eileen and her family was amazing and delightful. I am so thrilled and cannot thank Martin and John enough.