Her room was ready early so she had her bags taken up and had a bit of a poke around the expensive shops. Shortly after 1 p.m., she sent an email to Ruby and Steven from a computer in the hotel foyer, letting them know she’d arrived safely and that she was tired. She said that Australia hadn’t changed since she’d last seen it in the 1950s because it was still hot and dusty.

‘She told Rocco that the Crown had big balls of fire that shot into the sky and she promised to bring some Vegemite back so Rocco could try it,’ Ruby said. ‘She said she was going to try to get an early night to shake the jetlag.’

Shortly after 10 a.m. the following day – 20 September 2009 – Doug Grenfell met Agnes in the Crown foyer so he could drive her out to her dad’s old house in Deer Park.

‘She was an absolutely delightful woman,’ he told me. ‘So grateful that I was taking the time to show her around, and so pleased to meet somebody who had known her parents. She sat in the passenger seat beside me, chattering away, asking a million questions in her lovely accent.

‘She had a hard, shiny handbag on her lap, and I could tell by the way she was clutching it that she was a bit nervous. She didn’t know me from Adam, after all. But she struck me as plucky, having come all the way out on her own under such circumstances.

‘She told me, “It’s one of the things you want to do on your own, isn’t it? It’s probably not important to anyone but me.” But she was laughing as she said that.’

Doug pulled his car into Jim’s old driveway and put his key into Jim’s door, standing back so Agnes could be the one to open it.

‘She was certainly emotional, but not hysterical,’ he said. ‘She walked down the hall, looking in this room and that room, more interested than anything. She said something about the place having an “old person’s smell”.

‘I pointed out a photograph of her parents taken seven years after she was born, fresh off the boat from England. I opened the back door for her and told her how her dad liked to stand in the backyard feeding the rosellas, and she laughed and maybe there was a bit of a tear there. And that was basically that. It was a small house, so there wasn’t much to see.

‘We got back into the car and drove up to the high street so she could see where Olarenshaw Electrics had stood, and we drove up into Altona Lawn Cemetery so she could see her mother’s grave.’

Agnes bought flowers – chrysanthemums – at the cemetery florist and Doug hung back a bit while she went and paid her respects.

‘After that I took her back to the Crown Casino. We went over the arrangements for Sydney – she was going to check in to the Sir Stanford, and meet up with Snow the following day, and once that was done and the sisters had seen each other I’d send her the paperwork she needed to sign.’