Instead, to their horror, they were confronted with R.I.P. messages about their younger brother Bobby - who, unknown to the family, had been killed in a car crash.
The police had not got around to passing on the bad news to the family before 17-year-old Bobby's friends posted the death notice on Facebook.
Two of Bobby's friends also died when their car crashed in heavy rain.
Killed: Bobby Vourlis, who died in a car crash aged just 17. His family learned about his death not from police, but from Facebook
'I didn't get it,' Angela said as she recalled the moment on the morning of her birthday when she logged into the Facebook page.
'All these people were writing "RIP Chris Naylor" and "RIP Bobby" and I thought "What's going on?"'
She told Sydney's Daily Telegraph that she desperately began phoning her brother - but there was no answer on his mobile.
'I kept ringing and messaging but couldn't get on to him. So I rang Mum and said: "Chris Naylor must have died - I just read it on Facebook. But where's Bobby? People are writing about Bobby, too."'
Then came her mother's chilling reply - and with it a heartbreaking realisation: 'Bobby was with Chris Naylor last night.'
Social networking had broken the terrible news before the police could bring it to the family, even though six hours had passed since the teenager's body was found in the car wreckage.
Mrs Vourlis had to ring her local police station in a west Sydney suburb to ask if it was correct that her son had died.
Mr Peter Matelis, Bobby's uncle, said it 'beggared belief' that police had not contacted the family immediately after the accident.
'It's every parent's nightmare to lose a child in a car accident, but to have to hear it on Facebook, then have to chase up the police yourself, is just horrifying,' Mr Matelis told the Sydney paper.
Police defended the delay, pointing out that officers had difficulty in establishing Bobby's identity.
Once his identity was confirmed, one police station contacted another to send a car to the Vourlis family home.
But in the meantime, said Superintendent Ray Filewood, Mrs Vourlis made contact with police who then confirmed the death of her son.
Many Australians posting online comments said it was not the fault of the police because they had to be certain about the identities of the dead.
One writer said: 'What do people expect? With today's technology friends in attendance at these crash sites can text and post R.I.P. messages to friends and onto Facebook well before police have even had time to recover identification information from the deceased still trapped in vehicles.
'Just goes to show, technology can work against the police, just as it works for them, too.' ( dailymail.co.uk )
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