SEVENTEEN minutes was all it took for a Facebook post to the Coffs Harbour community about a GoPro camera, found on Diggers Beach, to find its owners, a UK couple who’d lost it some two years earlier while on holiday in Australia…on the same beach.

Cameron Johnson told News Of The Area, “In March this year, my family were on Diggers Beach for my brother’s wedding.

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“The kids were playing about on the rocks, then there was a commotion, Ruby, my daughter, had found a GoPro.
“It was smashed, rusty and had barnacles on it.

“We took it home and I managed to see two photos, but that was it.

“Then a couple of weeks ago I just thought I’d have another go; I put the SD card into my laptop and all the photos appeared.

“I quickly transferred them, to save them, which is good that I did, because I tried again a few days later and the SD card would no longer work.”

Cameron looked through the photos and identified who he thought must be the owners because there were numerous photos of them together.

He then posted a photo of the couple on a Coffs community group Facebook page, asking if anyone recognised them or knew anything about a lost GoPro.

“It was exactly seventeen minutes after loads of shares that one lady replied with a screenshot of Courtney Sweeney’s post back in August 2019 pleading for anyone who might have found a GoPro that she’d lost on Diggers Beach, while on holiday from the UK.

Bang; they had a name and with a bit more Facebook sleuthing, they connected with Courtney, in the UK, who burst onto the comments trail with, “Thankyou, Thankyou, Thankyou”.

With the GoPro’s owners found, Cameron will now post both the SD card and the actual GoPro, off to the South of England where Courtney and her partner live.

“It’s just so extraordinary that it was lost and then found on the same beach two years later; and…that we tracked down the owner on the other side of the world in less than twenty minutes,” said Cameron.

By Andrea FERRARI