WHERE MUM SAT: Geof sits where his mum sat for a photograph 71 years ago. This was a very emotional moment for Geof.

Mackay man’s pilgrimage to find family ties

GEOF ACTON said his eyes welled with tears as he sat in the spot his mother Rona had, in Israel 71 years prior.

He held with him just a single photo of her seated on a rock in front of water and a cliff face, an image his father shot while on their honeymoon in 1946.

The trip was a bucket list venture for Mr Acton, who was hoping to check two items from his list before returning home – to visit where his parents had fallen in love and to pilgrimage to Israel and walk where Jesus walked.

“There was really two stories in going for me, and it happened at just the right time in my life,” he said.

“There was this wonderful, amazing, unbelievable Christian component to my trip, because here I got to go to the placed where Jesus Christ walked, lived and died and it was just remarkable to see.

Read the article by Tara Cassidy in Mackay’s Daily Mercury.