Family IDs lost brother 48 years on
One man’s decades-long search for details about a long-dead Kiwi backpacker is over
Amystery New Zealand backpacker who died in South Africa 48 years ago has been identified. South African expatriate who witnessed his death at his Johannesburg home made a public appeal through the Herald this week to find the man, known only as “Red”.
Family and friends have contacted the Herald to say the man was Peter Kelly, from Whangārei.
“It was quite emotional,” said Kelly’s sister Colleen Wech, who immediately recognised the man as her brother.
Kelly died after accidentally falling seven storeys from a balcony in Hillbrow, Johannesburg in 1974.
The last man to see him alive, Tony Brebner, said he had been haunted by his death ever since and had unsuccessfully tried to track down his family for decades. Brebner, who used the pseudonym Brett in the story that appeared in the Herald and Advocate, had only met Kelly days before he died and did not know his full name or any other details.
Wech said the family never had closure after her brother’s death.
While New Zealand maintained diplomatic ties with South Africa during the apartheid era, communication was strained and it was difficult to get any information out of the country.
South African police eventually contacted their New Zealand counterparts after Kelly’s death, and Wech recalls a late-night visit from officers to their Whangārei home to break the news to the parents.
The police recommended Kelly be buried in Johannesburg.
Kelly was buried in a Johannesburg cemetery, and Brebner said he was the only person at the graveside not an official.
A service was also held in Whangārei, without a body and without much knowledge of how Kelly died.
“It was the most peculiar feeling,” said Wech.
Their father died soon after, and their mother died in 2004. A year later, Wech went to Johannesburg to trace her brothers’ last moments and said Mass at his graveside.
An article from the time said Kelly was a keen sportsman, representing Auckland schoolboys in cricket and the Hikurangi rugby club.
Ray Tewake, from Whangarei, worked with him as linesman at the post office in Whangārei before Kelly went overseas.
“He was hard case, great sense of humour, great to have a beer with. And he was the only one I trusted to drive my car, a Zephyr I think it was.”
In a letter sent home to family, Kelly spoke about the unfairness of apartheid South Africa, saying black South Africans were “despised” and treated “pretty poorly”.
He wrote that he gave a black man a ride home to Soweto and that he was appalled by the poverty. He finished the letter saying he was flying to England soon and would send his new address to the family. He died a few days later.
Brebner, now living in Australia, planned to speak to Wech this week. He said it would bring him great peace after 48 years to tell Red’s story.