California Gully's Bill Giesler celebrates milestone birthday with newly discovered family

While Bill Giesler was not able to spend his birthday on Friday in-person with all his relatives, to have found his family at long last means "the world".

Ouyen-born Mr Giesler was born on October 7 in 1932 but was placed in child welfare from the age of two-and-a-half until the age of 18.

His wife Lois said he had nothing and wasn't told anything of his family roots as he grew up in four or five different children's homes.

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There was one vague memory from when he was around two being in a vehicle driving away from a hessian house on what he suspects to be either the Murrumbidgee or Murray River but that was it.

That all changed in early 1980 when Lois encouraged him to finally get his full birth certificate, after years getting by, including serving in the army for 24 years, with a mere extract.

It was then that he learned the names of his parents for the first time, Willi Alwin Gieseler and Dorothy Pearl Woods.

This allowed him to eventually reconnect with his mother's family but some spelling errors relating to his father's surname and town of birth made further research difficult.

That was until an article appeared in the Mildura Weekly from a young German woman, Elna Bonnemann.

In 2012, after several trips and a school exchange to Australia and plenty of research, Ms Bonnemann had an offer to publish an article about her beloved grandfather.

"When we grew up we heard lots of stories after grandfather Willi, the daring seaman and captain travelling the wild oceans," Ms Bonnemann said.

"But what I seemed to listen most to, were the stories about his years in Australia.

"Deserting his sailing ship, rabbit hunting, gold panning, shearing sheep, being engaged to a chemist's daughter, crashing into the only tree in the desert and being saved only by miracle, and having lost all his teeth due to lead poisoning after working in a silver mine.

"Only stories - no details, no names of places or people, just hearsay - but exciting for us children."

She said publishing that article was "when the real adventure started".

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One of Bill's newly discovered cousins, Kathy Smith, was in touch with Elna after reading the article and a whole family in Germany discovered a brother and uncle they never knew existed.

Bill discovered two German half-siblings through Willi, brother Mathias and sister Aster, to join two Australian half-siblings he had discovered in the 1980s, Dorothy's children, a brother Alex and sister Marina.

Together the extended family pieced together the story.

Willi jumped ship in Australia in 1928 with around 12 other sailors after disagreements with the captain, and was in the country for six years before returning in 1934, aged around 26.

He met Pearl and on Bill's birth registration it said they were married in Broken Hill in 1931.

That is believed to be false as she was already married to Robert Duscher with whom she had son Alex.

When Pearl and Willi separated she went back to her husband Robert and they had another child Marina in 1935. Pearl died just two months afterwards with vascular disease.

Willi was already back in Germany.

Family records suggest Robert Duscher was willing to raise Bill as his own son but his parents objected, with Bill's cousin Kathy Smith saying he went to his death regretting that decision.

Lois and Bill say his German family accepted them and their children "straightaway".

"On Skype, they looked at him and they said, 'Turn on the side, yes you've got our father's nose'," Lois said.

"They recognized Willi's handwriting because he was the one that had registered Bill's birth.

"That was in the March 2012, and in May we flew over to Germany to meet them and they were all there at the airport, his brother and sister and their families."

Lois and Bill have returned four times to Germany and said they couldn't have been made more welcome.

Family members were planning to visit Australia for his birthday but the Ukraine situation has prevented that.

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"We're still in good communication with them all the time," Bill said.

"We've got a box of letters and postcards, they're always sending something."

One of Bill's youngest German relatives even recently phoned up to sing a song they had learned in English for their "Uncle Bill".

The likeness with his naval captain father is clear to see in one of the many photos of Bill's family around the house.

On one of the trips back to Germany, Bill's siblings Mathias and Aster even took him out to the Baltic Sea where Willi's ashes had been scattered, with Bill donning the captain's jacket that had belonged to his father.

While he may be separated by oceans from some of his family for his birthday, Bill now knows a sea of love that spans the globe.

They will all be there in spirit on Friday as he blows out the candles.

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