Bay residents have helped solve a 70-year-old mystery by reconnecting a family separated since the 1930s.
Earlier this month the Bay of Plenty Times published a story about 83-year-old Australian woman Patricia Phelps who was trying to find her brothers and sisters who did not know she existed.
Mrs Phelps had been searching for her mother Edna Eileen Hannon since she was 17 and after decades of hunting, discovered she had remarried and had moved to the Bay, changing her name to Edna Sexton.
Mrs Sexton died in 1996 but had eight other children.
The family did not know Mrs Phelps existed until they read the newspaper article.