They were strangers thrown together in the most extraordinary and horrific of circumstances: a young woman and a six-year-old girl, both passengers in a Cathay Pacific plane shot down by two Chinese fighter jets in 1954 as it flew past Hainan Island.
After three minutes of terror as the plane was raked with gunfire, both ended up clinging to life in a dinghy in the South China Sea - Valerie Parrish calling out for her lost father and brothers, while Peggy Thorburn helped Parrish's distraught mother comfort the little girl.
Both owed their life to the heroics of captain Phil Blown, who saved the lives of nine of the 18 people on board by putting the plane into a 560km/h nosedive and ditching it in the sea to escape the attack, the bloodiest event in Hong Kong aviation history.
Now, the two women - the only living survivors of the drama on a summer's day - have been put back in touch for the first time in more than half a century by a Sunday Morning Post report into the death of captain Blown, who died aged 96 in New South Wales.
An Agenda feature in September told how Parrish, now in her 60s and living in the United States, had written a moving poem to mark the death of captain Blown, whom she called 'my hero', recalling how he held in his arms 'the scared and frightened child of so long ago'.
By a remarkable coincidence, the daughter of Thorburn - now 80 and living in Australia - was visiting Shanghai at the time and picked up a copy of the newspaper. Eleanor Hewitt took it home with her to Perth to show her mother, bringing memories of the incident flooding back.
