January 6th, 2010 by Brad Lovell

Nancy and her husband spent Christmas Day at Nelson Bay. Unfortunately the day ended badly with Nancy losing her watch which was a wedding gift from her father. Nancy put the watch in her pocket before riding down the Sand Dunes. After a few slides down the dunes, Nancy reached into her pocket and noticed the watch was missing. A couple of days later, myself and good friend Tony from Jewellery Rescue drove out to Nelson Bay to meet Nancy and her husband. Nelson Bay is normally well out of my area of service, being over  a 3 hour drive. But I could hear how desperate Nancy sounded over the phone, and did not have the heart to say I couldn’t help her due to distance. After a quick drive from the 4WD tour company that takes people to the dunes, we we’re at the spot Nancy believed she lost the watch. Tony and I got to work, slowly and methodically metal detecting the steep sand dunes. I was actually expecting to dig many signals on these dunes, as people would be always losing rings coins and car keys, but only silence from our detectors. After about 3 hours plus of an exhausting search, we we’re unable to locate Nancy’s gold watch. My feeling is the heavy gold watch has sunk deep into the soft sand dune, well beyond what our metal detectors could reach. Nancy and her husband we’re very disappointed, as we’re Tony and myself. But we did give it our best shot. I really hope someone finds the watch some day and hands it over to the 4WD tour company.