Who is this little girl? 'Milestone Album' mystery solved

This girl's photo album discovered was found in a basement. Photo / Supplied

Delwyn McFarlane-Scott received quite a shock when she opened the New Zealand Herald on January 16.

"I was sitting on the bed reading the newspaper and all of a sudden I saw the photo and thought 'gee, there's a photo of me'.

"There's nothing like a shock like that."

The photo was from an old album found by Auckland man Andy Gilbraith when he was converting the attic of his Royal Terrace home in Sandringham.

"I climbed up there, and there were cobwebs everywhere and a few bits of rubbish, and there was this old suitcase," he told nzherald.co.nz last month. "I pulled the old suitcase down and opened it up ... and I just found that inside."

He approached nzherald.co.nz to help locate the little girl in the photos.

The photographs chart the life of a young girl from age one to around age five. The last photograph shows her wearing a white lace dress, perhaps for her First Communion or as a flower girl for a wedding.

Ms McFarlane-Scott, now 53, was that little girl.

"It's definitely me in the photo," she said.

"I would say in that photo I am about six or seven. I recognise the dress, it was one of those ones with the little bows on it."

After seeing herself in the paper, Ms McFarlane-Scott contacted her parents, who live in Mt Albert, to get a second opinion.

"I said to my dad, 'look at page four', and he said 'it's you'."

She asked her mother if she had other photos of her at a similar age to compare it to.

"She said 'yeah, you threw your album out a few years ago. We got it out of the rubbish bin and kept it.'

"We put two and two together and thought, 'God, there's a photo of me, I don't know about the rest of the album'."

The album, entitled the "Milestone Album", was produced by Crighton d'Ora Photography. As well as several photos of Ms McFarlane-Scott, the album includes two identical images of two young men working with shoe manufacturing machinery.

"My mum used to be a photographer at Crichton d'Ora - from 1945 onwards and when I questioned her she said that she took photos for the Milestone Club albums for many years," Ms McFarlane-Scott said. "I had photos taken of me to go into a Milestone Club album and the same photos were used as advertising for Crichton d'Ora's window display."

While Ms McFarlane-Scott grew up in the Mt Albert area, and much of her family still lives in the surrounding suburbs, she has no idea how the album came to be in Mr Gilbraith's attic.

"I was quite chuffed. It was actually quite lovely to see that there. There's another piece of the past turning up. I was quite chuffed."