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Sometimes finding a distant cousin is easy, at other times it takes the form of a saga. I’ve described elsewhere how I found Tony Nunes (on paper, not in person). I would never have found him if my father hadn’t been christened ‘Colthirst’.
Finding Wendy Lee was a strange mixture of keeping in touch, gambles that payed off, and shear fluke.
I'm no storyteller so I'll be brief. First, a gamble that payed off. Pat Wyatt in her book relates how she found Rosemary Dodd:
"In 1979 I 'shot an arrow into the air' by writing to the Royal Navy Department and inquiring if Lieutenant-Commander William Maurice Lloyd Astwood were still alive ... the result was a pleasant, though mildly astonished reply from Mrs. Astwood." Rosemary is a grand-daughter of that Mrs Astwood.
The next stage was shear fluke:
Rosemary Dodd was with some friends who wanted to see a house for sale. They called on Wendy Lee who happened to have open a large genealogy chart prepared by Wendy's father. While looking at the chart, Rosemary's eye was first attracted by the name 'Agnes Lee', her grandmother's name, and then by the name 'Allegonda'.
Then another gamble.
I was unaware of this, but wanted to contact Pat Wyatt. I knew that Pat was a Handasyde descendant and that there was a good chance that most of the Handasydes in Melbourne were relatives, so I opened the phone book and picked out G M Handasyde and F W Handasyde, knowing that 'Gilbert Murray' and 'Frederick William' were traditional family given names. I wrote short letters to them. G M turned out to be 'Glen Malcolm', a descendant of Gilbert's brother William. (I've deliberately excluded the many descendants of William Handasyde from this book). Glen gave me the phone number of a Robert Neil Handasyde in Western Australia. Robert had kept in touch with Pat Wyatt and her sister Pauline Craig over the years and knew Pat's new address.
So I visited Pat Wyatt and Pauline Craig, but that isn't quite the end of the story. Shortly after, I received some anonymous mail (which must have come from Pat or Pauline) which contained a piece of paper written by Rosemary Dodd with Wendy Lee's direct line of descent on it. I wrote to Rosemary and she sent me her email address, and the address of Wendy Lee.
Wendy and I have been corresponding since. It was Wendy who told me about the information collected by Donald Lindo.