Names found, mystery solved

By Jade Lawton
THE FOUR mystery youngsters featured in a photograph published in the Pakenham-Berwick Gazette on 8 July have been identified.
The parents of Christie and Brad Hermon and the mother of Briony and Anthony O’Callaghan this week contacted the Gazette to identify the foursome, who were pictured at the opening of the Brentwood maternal health and childcare centre in 1990.
Christie is on the far left, next is Briony, then Brad and Anthony is on the right.
Their mothers, Vicki O’Callaghan and Karen Hermon, were on the steering committee behind the centre and for the first year, when both Briony and Christie attended kindergarten.
Vicki, who was president of the steering committee and gave an opening speech, believes she may have been talking up the front when the photo was taken.
She remembers cutting out the picture when it was first published in the Gazette.
It was a fitting time to re-publish the photo, as Christie is turning 24 tomorrow (Thursday) and Briony turned 24 yesterday (Tuesday).
Karen and Vicki met while having their daughters at the old Berwick Bush Nursing Hospital.
The boys are both now 26.
“A cousin of mine saw the photo and rang me to say my family was in the Gazette,” Karen said.
“I thought she meant my sister-in-law (Lyn Hermon appeared in a photograph on page 2) but she said no, it’s your kids.”
Karen, Vicki and their children still keep in touch, but both families have left Berwick and spread out across Melbourne.
The Hermon’s moved to Cranbourne and the O’Callaghan’s to Beaconsfield. Brad Hermon now lives in Narre Warren South and works as a tow-truck driver nation wide, while Christie works for an aluminium company in Dandenong.
Briony has moved to Richmond and is a division one nurse at Epworth Hospital, while Anthony works in media and advertising and has moved to South Yarra.