A Lost And Found Story

[NgaiHill]

Have to share this story, its quite made my day.

Last year in October I was white water rafting with my son's school class when I lost my camera in the river. The strap broke while I was being hauled back onto the raft and despite a couple of rafts and the guy in the jetboat looking for a while (my rafted had drifted downstream by time I discovered it missing) it was not to be found. Due to the vegetation the river is quite brown and the camera sank fairly quickly so despite being coloured blue it was gone for good. I didn't report it to the police as I never considered the possibility that it would be found again - it wasn't in a part of the river that is frequented by swimmers. I did contact my insurance company and had a replacement about a week later.
This morning I received a phone call from a policewoman at the station nearest the area where the camera was lost. She said a man had found a camera and had the film developed, in order to trace the owner. The only clue was a photo of a vehicle in a river which the police traced as mine. I said I'd never lost a film camera but when she said there were also photos of rafting on it I described the camera well enough to convince her that it was mine, digital not film! The finder had found it buried on the river bank about a km downstream from where it sank - just recently. So 5 months later and at the very least the photos could be retrieved from the card. She couldn't tell me if the camera was actually still working though, I'll pick it up on Thursday and find out.
So this is a shameless plug for the Olympus Tough camera, bought on a holiday in Melbourne, lost in the Taieri River last year and now on its way home again.
Gotta go buy a Lotto ticket!

[AnonymousKiwi1]

Wow, that is simply amazing.
And how cool that the guy who found it went to all that trouble.

[theosus]

Originally Posted by AnonymousKiwi1

Wow, that is simply amazing.
And how cool that the guy who found it went to all that trouble.

He probably had prints made just to see if there were any dirty pictures or people doing stupid things on it he could post on break.com.... It's what I would do.

Then again he could be just a nice guy. I'm cynical that way....

[AnonymousKiwi1]

If that were the case, he would have stopped once he had the prints made - not gone to effort of getting the police involved!

Unless there are dirty pics on there, and Lisa's not telling.....

[Jim Bryant]

good for you!

[NgaiHill]

Originally Posted by AnonymousKiwi1

Unless there are dirty pics on there, and Lisa's not telling.....

Hahaha! Sorry to disappoint, certainly no dirty pics, although it was the pic of my 4WD stuck in a river that tracked me down - and I was pretty dirty about that!

[Mike367]

Actually, the camera now belongs to the insurance company; they paid you for it.

[candleman]

wow, that's so cool

write an article and sell it to stuff

[NgaiHill]

Originally Posted by Mike367

Actually, the camera now belongs to the insurance company; they paid you for it.

Hmmm, hadn't thought of the insurance company. Though I'm fairly sure they won't want my soggy old camera back, maybe I just won't tell them...

[NgaiHill]

And now for the found part of the story......

I went to the police station today to pick up the camera. It was looking much the worse for wear, which is to be expected for spending the last 5 months at the bottom of a river. Initially I couldn't get it to work but after a rinse under the kitchen tap and some blowing at the sand I was able to prise the shutter open and now have a fully functioning camera again. The SD card still looks like new and the battery is showing as still 100% fully charged! And I'm happy not to have lost the photos from that day after all.

I was able to phone the guy who found the camera, he said he found it lying on the bottom in about 2 metres of water and initially thought it was a beer can. He too was very impressed that it still worked and was pleased to get the back story of how it came to be in the river.

Now I'm off to write to Olympus!!