NOT a day goes by when Orange resident Pat Bridges doesn’t think about his childhood mate Billy Pastoors, who died some 70 years ago when the HMAS Sydney sank while fighting the German warship Kormoran.

Despite some 65 years spent trying to track down Mr Pastoors’ family, it wasn’t until a story about Mr Bridges appeared on the Central Western Daily’s online news site recently that members of the two families were once again united.

Mr Pastoors’ closest surviving relative, his sister-in-law Stella Pastoors, was keen to glean any information she could about the young seaman, who enlisted in the navy in 1940 aged 18.

She was thrilled to be able to meet Mr Bridges and his wife Nora in Sydney recently.

Mr Bridges said he was not only able to tell Mrs Pastoors tales about Mr Pastoors’ schoolboy antics, and sporting prowess, but he was also able to provide the family with a photograph of the two of them taken on Manly Beach when they were attending Burwood Christian Brothers school in the mid 1930s.

“It was wonderful to meet Billy’s family and tell them about him,” said Mr Bridges.

“As schoolboys we had so many plans together; we were going to set the world on fire.”