On this day in 1973, the spotlight fell on a beautiful reunion between a Canberran man, Robert Kirkwood, and his eldest sister, Elizabeth Kiely. They were seeing one another again after 26 years.
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Kirkwood was the youngest of nine siblings and a resident of Griffith. He moved to Canberra from Scotland in 1947 and was among the pioneering Scottish ex-servicemen who had taken advantage of a post-war immigration initiative aimed at bringing single men to Australia to contribute to the construction of Canberra.
Since his arrival, Mr. Kirkwood had been employed by the government and was working at Parliament House at the time of his reunion. Shortly after moving to Australia, he got married and had two daughters, Nerida, 18, and Debbie, 16.
While he seldom communicated with his six other surviving siblings, he had maintained a close bond with Kiely. Kiely has a married daughter and two grandsons in London, had expressed her long-standing desire to visit Canberra and meet her brother's family.
Her decision to visit had been solidified upon learning that her niece, Nerida, was getting married in May. She had planned to stay in Australia for six weeks and had intended to spend a few days in Sydney with Mrs. Kirkwood's brother and his family. However, she had not seen the sites Canberra had to offer as she had spent the time catching up her brother.
Despite her age of 67, Mrs. Kiely was an avid traveler who had lost count of her overseas journeys. She had recently returned from a trip to the United States, where she had met some of her maternal relatives for the first time. While she had no immediate plans for her next trip, she had no intention of settling down in her Glasgow home.
