This is the touching moment a brother and sister were finally reunited after 45 years of living on opposite sides of the planet.
Siblings Tony Beckett, 69, and Mary Dunstan, 72, last saw each other in 1979, before Mrs Dunstan moved to Adelaide, Australia.
The couple were emotionally reunited at Norwich train station on Tuesday afternoon after 45 years of living apart on April 16.
In footage of their first meeting in decades, Beckett had tears in her eyes as she warmly embraced her sister.
Mr Beckett, from Cantley, Norfolk, said: “I didn’t realize it had been so long. Now the time has come, I’m very nervous.
This is the very emotional moment when siblings Tony Beckett and Mary Dunstan met for the first time since 1979.
In footage of their first meeting in decades, Beckett had tears in her eyes as she warmly embraced her sister.
‘We had a great childhood and were very close.
“Our father was a shepherd on the farm, Mary trained as a nurse in the old Norfolk and Norwich, and I became a porter at St Andrews Hospital in Thorpe.”
Following the deaths of Mrs Dunstan’s husband in 2021 and Mr Beckett’s wife in 2023, the brothers knew they had to reunite soon.
Mrs Dunstan “started scraping together a few pennies” to catch the 22-hour flight back to the UK and arrived two weeks ago.
She said: ‘We left because we thought we would have a better life for our children in Australia and we made no mistake.
‘All our children have done well, we have no regrets.
“But I’ve missed my family a lot, especially Tony, as we were the closest brothers in terms of age. We fought like cats and dogs, but we were all very close.
Tony also hadn’t seen his niece Sam since shortly after she was born.
The last time Mrs Dunstan visited her hometown was in October 1979, shortly after Sam was born.
The last time Mrs Dunstan visited her hometown was in October 1979, shortly after the birth of her daughter, Sam Raven, who is now grown and accompanied her on the return trip. From left to right: Sam, Tony and Mary.
Mary Dunstan and her daughter, Sam Raven, passing through the barriers at Norwich railway station.
Mrs Dunstan cared for her husband, who was living with dementia, for the past ten years and the stress prevented her from even considering an earlier meeting.
Beckett said his mortgage and living costs had prevented him from traveling to Australia.
The family will gather and relive memories over the next week.
Much has changed since their childhood together on the farm, as the farm land has now become part of the city’s northern distributor road.
Tony and Mary are not the only siblings who have reunited after many decades apart.
In February, twin sisters Maurilia Chávez and Andrea López met after 81 years of separation after being orphaned and finally found each other through DNA testing.
And Diane Ward and Mary McLaughlin reunited in June 2022 for the first time in 55 years, just months after discovering they were related.
