Posted: under Jewellery Rescue Australia, Sydney Rescue's, Uplifting.
Tags: clothes, diamond, Maroubra, metal detector hire, platinum
Well this story is one of the reasons I do a metal detecting hire service for Australia. Martin called me Sunday night about 9pm when I went to bed early for a change tied after a water job. I didn’t hear him call, SMS or email and my phone was on the bedside table, I normally am a night owl and have taken calls as late as 1:20am. So in the morning I returned Martins call to learn his fiance had brushed her hands on her clothes and sent the ring flying around a path and a garden further away than they first thought in this cooler weather as hands shrink. I arranged to meet Martin and her fiance at their place that night so they would not have another night with out their heartfelt engagment ring currently absent without leave.
Martin and Olivia recovered ring.
Greeted on arrival by Martin and Olivia we where soon looking at the search area where the ring was lost. The couple had allready visually searched hard by torch light and looked into a surface drain near their newly installed outdoor oven. I also admired the new look mondo grass with scissor trimmed short back and sides not some time you see every day, all good all search efforts to re-find the AWL platinum and diamond ring. Olivia and Martin at my search request swept up the clippings over the path and put them in plastic bag just in case the ring was amongst it. We detected some thing metal and turned the dogs washable bed into a make shift sorting table to find a nail. Well my main detector quickly found the steel in the path a few surface pegs and nails. So I switched down to a cute little detector i use in tight places amongst plants. and with in a few passes detected a signal that matched some thing platinum like. I peeked into the detection area in question and stepped back while talking to Martin and Olivia about some other interesting finds I made at other places for a minute or two as I do. I am not sure what Olivia was thinking but she said aren’t you going to check that signal? Smiling inwardly at anticipation of their impending find I held out the pinpointer and said who wants the honours? Looking at each other Martin took the pin pointer and found what I had all ready seen and kept quiet about bad boy me, their wayward engagement ring. He took the ring brushed it and placed back on her finger and said “it looks like the wedding is still on” with a bit of humour of his own. Thanks guys for the invite to your home to search for what will be a new family heirloom one day. I think you might agree Olivia’s smile tells you about the thanks this couple sincerely expressed. Not so lucky for the next person I searched for that night on Maroubra beach with two detectorists, at times, working till 3 am. Result a No Find, thats detecting some times sadly I hope our detailed exhaustive search gave them some closure on their loss.
Jul 26 2011
Posted: under Jewellery Rescue Australia, Sydney Rescue's.
Tags: gold ring, google map, hire, Maroubra, metal detector, ring, treasure, treasure map
It was 4.30 pm on Maroubra Beach after a detector hire near the Rubicks cube north end of the beach where I failed to help find Mr Lee’s car keys even after much searching and fruitless digging metal detector search. I had a sheen of perspiration on my forehead from the last job and the bitter taste of failure even though I shouldn’t beat myself up as some jobs can be mission impossible before they start. Not that we are ever to know that before we start a search. To take debatable positive action I took a beach found gold coin and threw it out to sea for luck. Not that I am superstitious. Well it cant hurt right? Unless you happen to be swimming along and a coin hits you in the back of the head out of the blue. Just kidding – I was aiming out to sea. Then it was back to business once again. In my hand I had Mr Stephane’s excellent treasure map of where he and his family had visited the beach and unintentionally lost his wedding band. The prefect treasure map was a satellite image of the beach copied from google maps and pasted into a basic Windows picture editor like Paint (in windows xp) there was added red rectangles precisely locating the search area to within 5 meters.
- The perfect Treasure map
Marking the physical search area from the treasure map I began grid searching. Within 10 minutes searching I heard the familiar beep a cry for rescue from someone’s gold ring found precisely in the search area. This ring wasn’t ”some one’s” as it had the names of Mr Stephane and his wife, name neatly engraved on the inside band. The outside of the ring had a lovely unique pattern, so interesting seeing all the different designs. After admiring the ring I zipped it into a secure pouch so it wouldn’t be dropped and lost again. Ring secured, I texted Stephane the good news, but before I could put the phone in my pocket a well spoken gentlman called out my name from the nearby beach access path. Wonder how he knew it was me? No doubt the metal detector in hand tipped him off. I asked him if he read the text message I just sent? He said no, as I handed him his wedding band. “No way! you found it already? Thank you, and my wife thanks you. I told him how I threw some coins in the ocean for luck and luck was given. As there were ominous signs beach sweeper tracks over this part of the beach as well. Stephane gave me some great advice for my web site which I thank him for as well as the very generous reward for the swift safe return of his ring. I don’t think you could meet a nicer person with a little old world charm in a young face.
Aug 29 2009
Posted: under Jewellery Rescue Australia, Sydney Rescue's.
Tags: beach, hire, Maroubra
The afternoon started at 12.30pm when I was on my way to search for Mr Stephane’s wedding band which slipped off his finger while enjoying a beach visit at the lovely Maroubra Beach. I arranged to meet Stephane later that day. As luck and good friends would have it, Brad - another skilled metal detector from www.metaldetectorhire.com.au phoned to ask if I was available to cover a metal detecting job for him. (Brad and I work well together to put customers needs ahead of our own. ) Brad told me of Mr Lee’s story – how the night before he coincidentally lost his hire car key on the same beach as Mr Stephane’s while he was travelling from Melbourne to Brisbane stopping in Sydney to visit friends.
Beach eats hire car key.
I meet Mr Lee on the north end of the beach next to the giant rubics cube sculpture. I also noted while crossing the beach the tell tale tracks of the beach sweeping machine from earlier that morning and started to become worried. Mr Lee told me if the key wasn’t found he would be stranded in Sydney for at least two more days in a motel waiting for a spare set of car keys to be posted up to Sydney to enable him to continue his journey. Mr Lee also said he had to call the NMRA out to unlock the car to get kids clothes out for the night. This was disastrous news to my mind and made me very determined to break this run of bad luck for this family and to find those lost keys. I had car trouble travelling in New Zealand so I know what it is like having rental car troubles. Ours was broken into with a smashed window we had to wait for the window to be replaced. But sometimes the hardest work and best intentions can’t cancel stop the run of bad luck. I searched hard in vain digging every metal target and there was lots of metal rubbish for three and a half hours. The search covered all the area the family had walked over and played on. The keys had to be there… or were they? Mr Lees ‘s Sydney friend had joined us on dusk and we all basically reached the same conclusion. We where starting to think, that the key had indeed been swept up and taken away to a rubbish tip as the key is large with a hire car tag and easy to be swept up in the machine. Mr Lee thanked me for my hard work and search efforts and paid me the a key search. I just hope Mr Lee had travellers insurance which covers these sort of out of pocket expenses while travelling. From here it was a 700 meter walk down the beach walk to my original search job finding the gold wedding band for Mr Stephane. I am not really a superstitious person but I threw a small hand full of coins I found on the beach into the ocean to try buy some good karma for the next job. Hope it works.
Tony Jewellery Rescue.
Aug 28 2009
