SHE has sung Vera Lynn's wartime classic We'll Meet Again on countless occasions over the years.

Now jazz singer Carol Addy has travelled to Australia to meet her mother again for the first time in more than half a century.

The 58-year-old was reunited with Sheila Wood, 76, at a hotel in Sydney harbour, overlooking the famous opera house.

Carol, of Broadway, Fulford, York, who was given up for adoption as a baby, said today: "It was lovely to meet her. It was a really happy moment.

"We had shed a few tears on the phone beforehand but now it was just wonderful to meet her again. We really got on well."

Sheila had to give Carol up after trying for nine months to look after her, just after the end of the Second World War.

Sheila's own mother had died, she had no one to support her and she was living in great poverty, with Carol having to sleep in a drawer.

Carol's father, an American serviceman who had been serving at an East Anglian air base, had returned to America.

The baby came to live in York with adoptive parents, who died when she was quite young.

Carol said she had told her mother that the couple had given her a happy, secure childhood. "I said I didn't want her going down any guilt road, and I was pleased I had been adopted. I knew she had done her very best for me."

Carol, who sings at jazz concerts across the York area with the band Some Like It Hot, said her mother was also a singer, and they had ended up singing songs to each other.

"I sang: "You'd be so nice to come home to," and she sang: "Wouldn't it be lovely."

She also met her half-brothers Michael, 55, and Steven, 54.

Carol travelled to Australia with her husband, John, after tracing her mother earlier this year.

She said everyone had been struck by how alike she and her mother were. "My husband said: "You're both like peas from a pod."

Updated: 09:18 Saturday, November 08, 2003