Blanket claimed after 40 years
A scout blanket found on the side of the road 40 years ago has been reunited with its original owner – who has no idea how it came to be missing in the first place.
The blanket was found near Gabrielle Bundy-Cooke’s family farm in Eltham in 1979 and for the past 24 years it has been in a box of items kept in the Palmerston North City councillor’s attic.
After coming across it again recently, she put a post on Facebook on January 7 in search of the owner, never thinking they would be found.
Colin Dudley, from Ha¯wera, saw the post and thought the blanket looked very familiar.
‘‘As soon as I saw the other pictures Gabrielle had put up I knew it was mine,’’ he said. ‘‘One of the badges was Kaponga with the yellow and red.
‘‘I know it’s mine but I don’t know how I lost it. Realistically you never expect to see it again but I always wondered where it had gone.’’
Dudley, who works at the South Taranaki District Council, said he moved to Ha¯ wera from Kaponga when he was 16 and was sure he had the blanket with him. How it went missing was a mystery.
‘‘It’s something I’ve often thought about and wondered where it was. I’d never have given it away to anyone or anything like that,’’ he said.
While the blanket has seen better days it is still covered with scout badges from Australia and New Zealand, which Dudley said he got from the New Zealand Scout Jamboree in Kaiapoi in 1969.
‘‘All the scouts took the train from Eltham down to Kaiapoi to go to the jamboree,’’ he said.
‘‘I don’t think I had the blanket by that stage, but I collected a lot of the badges and that’s where all the Australian ones came from.’’
Now 63, Dudley said he first joined the scouts in Kaponga aged six or seven, but seeing the blanket again had brought back many memories.
‘‘My mum painstakingly hand sewed everything onto the blanket for me,’’ he said.
‘‘I always remember warm blanket.’’ it being a
Bundy-Cooke said she had received lots of good feedback about the blanket post, which had more than 130 comments and 700 shares on Facebook.
‘‘I didn’t know it was such a treasure. To me it was just an itchy blanket we found on the side of the road.
‘‘It’s proved to me how strong the power of the internet is. It’s huge. ‘‘I’m rapt to have found Colin.’’ After making contact with BundyCooke, it turned out Dudley knew her brother, Michael How.
‘‘It’s a small world really,’’ Dudley said.