We FOUND some DISTANT's in Toowoomba!!!!!!!!!!! There are in total 5 known Distant's and we went to each and every address that was listed in the white pages of Australia. We drew a blank at the first four houses and were ready to give up hope.

When we reached the fifth house, we saw cars parked in the garage but no signs of people. We were going to drive off when I saw three people walking to the backyard so I ran in and asked if there was a Distant living there. The young guy said...yes I am Troy Distant and that's my dad, Dennis Distant!!!

We were of course elated as FINALLY we found more Distant's in the world. We started talking about our fathers and grandfathers. Dennis Distant even knew about the Botanist William Lucas Distant who wrote the butterfly book so definitely there was some connection. He mentioned that the Distant's came from England. Later Dennis suggested we hope over to his brother, Stan's place, as he would know more about our heritage. Sadly we forgot to take photos of our Distant relatives.

We drove back to the first house on our list. We discovered that all the Distant's in Toowoomba are related. There where we met Margaret his wife and talked about our family. It was the BEST part of the whole day. His father was William Lucas Distant (not the botanist)who worked on the railway and his Grandfather was John Distant who fought in WWI and WWII and received medals of bravery. We believe that William and Grandpa are cousins. Stan and Margaret have one son and two daughters. Their son, Steven, wrote an e-mail to Papa before and in fact in the 1970s when Stan was based in Singapore (he was a cook in the Navy) he actually met Uncle Denis at the bank when he looked up Distant in the phone book and found our names!

We mentioned that the coat of arms we bought at the South Bank market said the Distant's originated from Italy and Stan mentioned that his father looked exactly like an Italian so he wouldn't be surprised if it was a fact!

So after a while we said our Goodbyes but not before leaving our address and contact numbers. This was truely one of the best parts of this trip. Went to Picnic point on top of hill for lunch before heading home on our 2hr drive.