Every year an estimated 3.7 million Australians lose something of significance. As Sarah Harris finds, a good detective and a prayer to St Anthony * won't go astray.THERE are degrees of separation. From the mild irritation of the momentarily misplaced to that awful gut-churning realisation ... gone!
Unclipping her dogs’ leads after they safely passed an inviting wombat hole, Donna Picton jogged on.
“I only went about 50 metres and I turned to find Mitchell right behind me and Maddy wasn’t,” she recalls. “I figured she had gone back to the wombat hole so I went back there, calling, whistling. I listened at the hole, but could hear nothing, not a sound.’’
It was the beginning of a vigil. Leaving only for long enough to collect warm clothes and a torch from home, the Woodend student stayed on the track in the Wombat State Forest until 10 o’clock that night.
At first light, Picton, a trained outdoor instructor, returned with a friend who held the rope as she got into a climbing harness and descended 15 metres into the burrow before being defeated by a hairpin bend.
“I wasn’t thinking too well,” she admits. “I thought if I got stuck the SES would rescue me and maybe help us dig the burrow out. In hindsight it was pretty stupid.”
When the Weekly first spoke to Picton her beloved miniature bull terrier Maddy, who is desexed, chipped and registered, had been missing for more than a week.
“I have gone through phases,” she says. “The first two or three days I was crying all the time; now I am just flat, drained.
“I have put posters up everywhere, taken out ads, rung everyone I can think of, including the pound, to the point they are starting to get short with me. But still nothing, not a thing.’’
From community notice boards to power poles, pets account for the most impassioned Lost and Found adverts, but it’s objects, not animals that are most frequently reported missing.
RACV Insurance claims data shows that jewellery is by far the most commonly lost item, accounting for 54 per cent of all claims during the past financial year.
Sunglasses and glasses, hearing aids, mobile phones, laptops, MP3 players and cameras also made the top 10 list of claims.
Irrespective of whether they are insured, a good proportion of lost or stolen items will turn up … somewhere. Of the 171,000 phones blocked in 2010-11 after being reported missing, almost a quarter were unblocked at the owner’s request after being found down the back of the couch or under a car seat.
If after retracing your steps you don’t find what you are looking for, the police station should be your next port of call.
Police will hold items for 90 days after which they will go under the hammer at Breen Auction House in West Footscray, where the MP3 you accidentally left in the back of a cab might be one of 30 among the mountain of unclaimed and forfeited items auctioned every three weeks. This is also where unclaimed lost luggage from Melbourne Aiport and some unclaimed freight from courier companies winds up.
“One of the more unusual items we’ve had was a redback spider in a glass dome,” recalls managing director Kevin Breen. “Stock coming in varies a lot. You might get two iPhones from Dandenong police one week and 10 bikes the next. Everything is a bargain – when 60cm televisions were worth $2000 new we were knocking them over at $500 - $600.”
Many of the buyers at police auctions are dealers, who resell the goods through shops or on eBay.
“Whatever is lost people have already claimed on their insurance so they don’t bother looking,” says Breen.
Then there are those like Tamsyn Murray who refuse to give up. Murray was planting garlic in her Kerrie garden when she realised her heirloom wedding/engagement ring had gone.
“I knew it was in the garlic patch somewhere,” she explains. “My son had a metal detector and we tried that and that didn’t work, then we borrowed another metal detector and that didn’t work either.
“We were about to hire another really heavy duty one when I thought I am sure there must be people who do this professionally.”
Murray called in modern-day treasure hunter Aaron Zanussi of Detect Metal Detecting and Recovery Service.
“It was very funny,” she says. “I showed him to the garlic patch and I left him and after about a minute later he walked back to the house with my ring. I was so ecstatic I kissed him. I think he was a bit taken aback.”
Not all jobs have been quite so easy for Zanussi who has been called on to find everything from lost keys to broken bits of machinery in packaged food at processing plants.
“There was one just recently where the guy had an argument with his wife and had thrown his ring,” he says. “It was a fair old throw. It took me about two hours to find it.
About 30 per cent of recent cases have involved people tossing rings in anger. I think financial pressure has a lot to do with it. That sort of pressure causes arguments.”
Sometimes reuniting people with lost items can stir up painful buried memories, as Bill Wyndham of Lost Medals Inc is acutely aware.
As one of a trio of extraordinary men dedicated to returning badges of honour to a veteran’s nearest kin, Bill observes, “There is a generation to whom the medals represent everything that was wrong with dad.”
Perhaps that is why three US Marine Corps medals ended among the thousands of unclaimed and undeliverable items up for sale in Australia Post’s annual auction.
The medals and the couture wedding gown are the most poignant offering in a mountain of stuff which includes a 3.6 metre swimming pool, 21 dictionaries, 20 pairs of Ugg boots, a pole-dancing kit, dozens of PlayStations, a Blackberry, laptops, a chainsaw, two five kilogram weights and a bowling ball.
Abbeys Auctions have been running the Australia Post sale for 12 years. “The first year they brought the stuff it came in a couple of small vans,” says auctioneer manager David West.
“Now it’s 80 cubic metres of boxes because of the internet and the volumes now being posted.”
Proceeds from the sale go to the Cancer Council, which is expected to receive more than $60,000 again this year.
Lost property left unclaimed at Southern Cross station is also sent off to charity after three months. Barely a month after the last clear-out there are already enough lost umbrellas to start a stall.
“It depends on the item whether people bother to come and collect them,’’ says Umair Butt, Wilson Security’s luggage room supervisor. “The strangest thing was a pair of crutches. How you could arrive at the station on them and not notice you didn’t have them when you left?”
After nine years managing the Lost Property Office for Metlink, Andrew Roe has his own theories about careless commuters.
“I put a lot of it down to people being preoccupied,” says Roe. “You only have to look at people to see their minds aren’t on what they are doing. They are too busy texting, listening to music, worrying, hurrying.
“I do wonder sometimes though. I have had this same person ring up several times about false teeth.
“This particular gentleman had left his false teeth on a train at least once before. I was tempted to ask him why he wouldn’t just keep them in his head when travelling... but then I thought I probably shouldn’t go there.”
CONTACTS:
Lost Medals Australia: www.lostmedalsaustralia.com
Detect Metal Detecting Recovery Service: Phone 0402 330 961 or www.detect.net.au
If you have information about Maddy phone 0412 263 002
*St Anthony, patron saint for seekers of lost articles.
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