Australian connection

Around 2002/03 we went to Australia for Christmas to meet up with my brother and his then-fiancee (Ian and Victoria) who were mid-way through a year-long trip around the world. Australia seemed like a good place for them to stop for Christmas as an old school friend of my brother’s had married an Australian girl (Tom and Mrs Tom) and was living in Sydney, so it meant they would be with friends for the festive break. We arrived the day before Christmas Eve and it was decided we, along with Tom and Mrs Tom, would all have dinner together on Christmas Eve. Also invited where Mrs Tom’s parents who lived locally. That evening at dinner, being of similar ages, my parents and her parents got chatting. After much conversion they found out that Mrs Tom’s aunt on her father’s side had moved to the UK some years earlier and, it turned out, lived in the same small village a couple of miles outside of Winchester (called Easton, population of about 700) as my aunt on my father’s side. At the next available opportunity we called my aunt (Pam) and apparently this other lady lived across the road literally from my aunt and they were friends.