Nanette Clark (42), of Waldronville, said years of trying to find her birth father had given her no leads.
All she has is his name, a black and white photo of him with her birth mother at a Shacklocks’ staff party in the Southern Hotel in Dunedin in the 1970s and information he worked at Shacklocks shortly before it closed.
Her birth mother believed he lived in South Dunedin.A post of the photo on a social media page had resulted in nearly 500 shares and about 100 comments, but no firm leads, Mrs Clark said.
"It’s just bizarre because I have been looking for him for a long time and there are people who remember him but no-one is sure of where he is now."
Finding her birth father would provide closure, regardless of his response.
"If he doesn’t want to meet me I don’t have a problem with it, but if I know he existed that’s fine. It’s for closure really.
"I’m coming up to 43, I’ve got two teenage kids and there are just things I sort of see in them that they must have got from their grandfather."
It was not the first time she had searched for a parent.‘‘I always knew I was adopted.
"I met my mother when I was in my 20s and she lives just down the road in Brighton."
Mrs Clark’s mother was a single parent of two children, and when she discovered she was pregnant with her she did not tell her father, Mrs Clark said. The need to find her birth father had been intensified by the death of her adoptive mother, she said.
"I was very close to my mother but she died of cancer four years ago."
"Her husband was adopted and he has just managed to find his family so it does happen."
She had a simple message for her father, or anyone who knew him: "Everywhere I have gone I have just hit a brick wall. It would just be good to know where you are."
