PHUKET: A woman with links to Australia and Britain has been reunited with her Thai mother in an embrace that ended decades of separation and longing.

Last century north of Phuket, an Australian tin mine manager romanced his Thai maid, who gave birth to a daughter.

But the manager had a wife back home and when the time came to leave, he asked a British mate to take care of his then six-month-old offspring.

The British friend adopted the child who grew up without knowing her natural mother.

A hug in Phuket yesterday ended years of longing for Kimberley Ferreira, 54, as she embraced her mother, Yoklean Jankeaw, 79.

With Mrs Ferreira was her husband, Carlos. The pair had been searching for Khun Yoklean on the basis of slim documentation that led them to confuse the island of Phangan with the mainland Thai province of Phang Nga.

''I have been thinking about you all the time,'' were the first words Khun Yoklean said when the pair finally met on Phuket, where the tin mine manager bought her three plots of land, decades ago.

It's expected mother and daughter have a lot to talk about in coming days and months, catching up on everything that's happened to them both since 1960. .

Raised as British, Kimberley only discovered her exotic past 30 years ago when her mother lay dying and told her she had been adopted.

Later Kimberley discovered that her natural father, the Australian tin mine manager, had died in 1999. Her British father died in 2005.

Khun Yoklean later married and had three other children.

''I remember the Australian man as 'Mr Person,''' Khun Yoklean told Phuketwan today. ''I worked as a maid at the time, and was paid 2000 baht a month.

''In that time, the manager's house in Takuapa [a town in Phang Nga, north of Phuket] was a small bungalow. His wife went back to Australia for five or six months every year.

''I found myself pregnant and everybody in the village knew who was the father. Six months after I gave birth at the clinic, Mr Person talked to me.

''He said 'Look I have a good friend, he is a British engineer with a Malaysian wife. They want children and can't have them. Maybe we should adopt our child out and give her a bright future.'

''I thought about it and had to make sure. I was prepared to raise the child myself. Then the Malaysian woman came to visit and she told me how much she wanted a daughter.

''She promised to take good care of the child. She asked me if i needed money, but i said it had nothing to do with money.

''I wanted my daughter to have a good future. So I said goodbye. The couple moved to Kuala Lumpur and that was the last I heard.''

Eventually, Kimberley's adoptive parents moved back to Britain and then also to the US.

''I didn't tell anyone, only my first son, who was three years old at the time. He wondered where his sister had gone. Later I had two daughters.

''One of them is now nursing in Australia and has an Australian husband,'' Khun Yoklean said. ''My other daughter is working in the US as a nanny.

''I live in Phuket with my oldest son.'

Kimberely has been in Thailand, looknig for her mother, since September. ''I misunderstood, thinking that Phangan and Phang Nga were the same place.

''I was upset when I realised that I was in the wrong area - I almost lost hope,'' she said. ''I am so glad now I didn't give up.''