Good Samaritan Peter Harrington has received a letter of thanks from Australia after helping an elderly woman who suffered a nasty fall.

The 21-year-old came to the aid of the pensioner after she slipped on a greasy garage forecourt.

Other customers at the former BP station in Abingdon Road, Oxford, only recently demolished, ignored the woman, who was in her 80s and obviously in considerable pain.

Shocked by their indifference, Peter, at that time a history student at Oxford Brookes University, helped the woman up and got her to her car. Because she was so shaken, he drove her to east Oxford where she was staying, and then walked back more than a mile to collect his own car from the petrol station.

In the weeks that followed, Peter often wondered if the injured woman had recovered, but could not find the house where he had left her last Easter.

Now, six months after the incident, Evelyn Pym traced Peter through the university from her home in New South Wales to express her gratitude.

Mrs Pym, who spent five days in the John Radcliffe Hospital with a broken arm after her fall, hopes to meet Peter again when she returns next spring to visit family and friends. Peter graduated with a BA Honours degree from Brookes earlier this year and is concentrating on his band, Almost Unheard.

On the day he met Mrs Pym, he was already late for a CD recording session at the Warehouse Studios in Kennington.

Peter, of Mark Road, Headington, said: "It find it terrible that everyone was walking past. She was very shaken. It was wonderful to receive a letter from her.

"I rang to thank her, and she told me she intends to come over again next May, so I hope we'll meet again." Peter's personal tutor, Dr Detlef Muhlberger, said: "Peter, like most students, has a genuine social conscience and an awareness of his role in society.

"He was a good student and an unassuming young man, and I was pleased to hear of his compassion and consideration for others."