In her quest to piece together the puzzle of her family tree, Aenone, 74, had performed similar tasks many times before.

But during this particular fact finding mission Aenone found the one thing she had spent more than five decades searching for.

“I was actually looking up the cemetery in France where my grandfather (Dudley Joseph Clift) is buried and for some reason, I can’t explain, I just typed in his name and I couldn’t believe what I saw,” Aenone said.

There on her screen was a story published in The Maitland Mercury, on September 26, 2012, and the photograph of her grandfather she had never seen.

“After 54 years of research this is the best thing I have ever found,” Aenone, of Melbourne, said.

“I cried for about an hour after I saw it and I ­couldn’t sleep. It really is a miracle. I have a­ ­photograph of my father during WWII and now I will be able to put this photograph of my grandfather next to him.

“I’m still floating 10 feet above the ground.”

The sepia-toned image of Private Clift was found in a box of memorabilia belonging to fellow (Maitland) fallen war soldier Sam Robinson.

Apparently the two men had crossed paths during the war and their portraits ended up in the possession of East Maitland woman Heather Yates.

Ms Yates then enlisted the help of military­ ­historians John Gillam and Yvonne Fletcher who embarked on a search to reveal Private Clift’s story and hopefully find his family.

Initially, the pair discovered that Private Clift was a former stock and station agent, who stood six feet tall and was a month shy of his 32nd birthday when he enlisted on March 30, 1915, just before Australia’s baptism of fire at Gallipoli.

They also learned the tragic details of Private Clift’s death in March 1917.

But nothing could have prepared Gillam and Fletcher for the connections they were about to make.

“This has been quite serendipitous and ­remarkable for everybody, I think,” Mr Gillam said.

“But for Aenone, who had never seen this photo of her grandfather before, it has been an extraordinary find. 

“This has been much more than anyone expected and now the story is complete.”

The story also caught the eye of Annabel Day, daughter of Guy Clift, one of Private Clift’s brothers.

“This has been extraordinary,” Mrs Day said, who now lives at Bridge House built by Private Clift’s ­relative Samuel Clift.

“I didn’t know a whole lot about my family’s ­history so to be able to learn the full story is ­wonderful.”

And for Gillam and Fletcher the end of their research is really the start of something deep and meaningful.

“We think that WWI is a long time past but the flow on effect across the generations is really just finishing. It’s a linear thing that flows on,” Ms Fletcher said.

“There are so many stories of those who died of a broken heart and we certainly see that in the parents of these people because they died incredibly young.

“So you can imagine the pain a community like Maitland had to deal with where so many young men went to war. 

“And much of it has been too painful to deal with and that’s where we step in.”