Parents retrace daughter's trip to meet Tongan girl she delivered 21 years ago

Roger and Lynette Clark visited Macquarie Island to photograph penguins as part of a trip retracing travel of their late daughter Lisa. Photo / NZ Herald

Parents who have travelled the world in memory of their late daughter have retraced her steps to Tonga to find the first baby she ever delivered.

Roger and Lynette Clark, who are in their 70s, followed entries in the travel journal kept by their daughter Lisa, who died aged 40 of ovarian cancer in October 2012, the Daily Telegraph reports.

In 2016, they travelled 12,875km to photograph the same breed of penguin that featured an old postcard from Lisa from her holiday in Australia, then made the trip a second time after realising they had captured the wrong bird.

They have now completed a mission to meet the baby girl Lisa, a doctor, delivered 21 years ago during her medical training in Tonga.

Armed with just a name and a picture of the mother and baby after the birth, Roger Clark spent a month trying to trace the girl before embarking on the month-long trip.

He contacted genealogy experts, the hospital where the baby was delivered, the Ministry of Tourism in Tonga and the Tonga Registry Office, even posting on Facebook, before finally getting the name of the girl's village, Ta'anea, from the Tonga High Commission in London.

Dr Clark, who worked as an A&E consultant, was 26 when she was sent to train in Tonga by her London medical school in 1997, and wrote letters to her parents recommending places for them to stay.

She told her father on her deathbed: "Dad, I don't want to be forgotten."

The trip, from December 15, 2018 to January 17, 2019, saw the couple travel from Chandler's Ford, Hants, to Macquarie Island near New Zealand to photograph rare Royal penguins, to Northland, and the Tongan Island of Vava'u, where the baby was delivered.

Writing about the delivery in her journal, Lisa said: "I went to the hospital and after a lot of waiting around I delivered my first baby and it weighed 9lb 12oz.

"It was all a bit nerve wracking but I loved it. It was the mother's eighth baby - she was 40 - and it was a little girl this time.

"The lady was very proud though and even named her after me."

After a visit Ta'anea hospital where the child was born on January 28, 1997, a village resident recognised the mother from the Clark's photograph and directed them to the family's house.

We had followed Lisa's footsteps though her diaries, we had seen what she wanted us to see

Roger Clark

Roger Clark said that, after a halting introduction, they had managed to communicate with the Tongan family via one member who spoke English, eventually being introduced to the 21-year-old girl, Meleane.

"I really felt very humbled to meet the family," said Clark. "I knew, for me, it was a really important moment and I wanted to make this girl feel special, but I thought about it from her angle - we were just some tourists with some loose connection to her.

"We had to prove to them we were friendly and honest, and we ended up having a wonderful connection with Meleane and the family."

After dinner with Meleane, the couple made their final stop at Paradise Hotel in Ta'anea, which Dr Clark had stayed at during her trip.

"As I slowly shut the door to room 115 [where she had stayed], I felt a strong sense of personal closure," Clark said.

"We had followed Lisa's footsteps though her diaries, we had seen what she wanted us to see, we had touched on her foreign experiences."