WHETHER in Herefordshire where he grew up, or in Southern Australia which has been home for 50 years, Ian Jenkins has always been struck by sheer coincidence.

Back home in Kington for a visit, 85-year-old Ian, who was born and brought up in Almeley, has crossed paths with many people at home and abroad who have turned out to share a county connection, and even a family link.

From the time he arrived in Melbourne as a Ten Pound Pom in the 1950s, he found there was little need to feel homesick.

There was the fisherman who turned out to have known the best spots on the Wye, – he had emigrated from his home at Byford – and a man selling raffle tickets at a golf club near Melbourne.

“Your name’s the same as mine,” the man told Ian. When he explained where he was from, the man replied: “I was talking to your dad last year!”

It turned out he had moved to Australia in 1928, having once lived at Hopley’s Green near Almeley.

The youngest of five children born at Almeley Post Office, Ian did a variety of jobs before flying off to a new life with his late wife, Vilma, and their daughter, Susan.

Within a day of arriving in Melbourne, Ian had secured a bus driving job. Later he took a job at Melbourne University, working in the veterinary department, where he remained until his retirement.

When a colleague talked about the Australian army needing to find replacement horses during the war, he produced a set of photographs.

“I couldn’t believe it, he had pictures of the High Street and Bridge Street in Kington!” said Ian.

After he retired, Ian and his wife acquired a motorhome and began to travel. After meeting the man from Byford near Sydney, he and Vilma were put in touch with his farming relatives in New South Wales.

“I got chatting to this chap, and I told him I’d been taught to sharpen an axe by Jim Aspley in Herefordshire – he said, me too! My life’s full of coincidences.”

He married his second wife, Joanne and returned home for a holiday. They visited Largs, his mother’s home town on the Scottish west coast, where Margaret Halliday was still fondly remembered.

“She was a professionally trained contralto, and in the war sang to entertain the troops recuperating in Largs.” Among them was Alec Jenkins, one of the so-called Old Contemptibles who had fought at Gallipoli and the Somme before being invalided out. After their marriage and move to Herefordshire, Margaret continued to sing and her duets with tenor Mr Morgan, the Woonton blacksmith, were highly acclaimed.

Sadly, Ian lost his second wife earlier this year, and he has returned to Kington for a holiday with his sister, Margaret, and brother, Ron in Hereford.

The stay has given him a chance to catch up with family news, and research family history. In his early working life, Ian did a bread round in South Herefordshire for Mother’s Pride. “I stopped at the Angel pub halfway down the Callow,” he says. “It turned out my great-grandad, and my grandad, Jim Jenkins used to stop off with their coach and horses on the journey from Ross to Hereford, and the landlady remembered them!”

Eventually the business was taken over,by Midland Red. “And that’s where I started as a bus driver!” says Ian.