A TROVE of personal letters, family photographs, certificates and other material reflecting the life of the late Reverend Davies and his family was found in the roof cavity during the demolition of a house in Dart Street, Adamstown last week.
Soon, the hunt was on to find the clergyman’s descendants.
“It’s not uncommon for us to find all sorts of stuff in roof spaces – firearms, jewellery, money,” said Ben Price, the owner of Newcastle-based demolition firm, Hunter Group.
“People crawl into a corner or stuff it behind a beam. Then they either die or forget it’s there.
“We don’t go looking for loot. But, before we go to work on the building, we have to check for asbestos and determine its structural rigidity, so we know how it will come down.”
Mr Price learned that Rev Davies moved from Dungog to the Adamstown property, possibly in the late 1950s or 60s.
The link to Dungog emerged from several certificates referencing Dungog.
“I could have just tossed it in the skip and not given a rats, but I thought ‘maybe I can find these people’,” he said.
“And all those beautifully handwritten letters … I just couldn’t throw them out.”
The letters intrigued the younger members of his crew.
“They’re in their 20s and asked me about the letters. They’d never seen a handwritten letter before,” he added with a laugh.
Mr Price posted some details on his well-read Facebook page asking if anyone knew the family. Within 24 hours it had received almost 60,000 views, including through a Dungog page that shared it.
Several people contacted Rev Davies’ son Ian, who still lives in Adamstown. Now in his 70s, he collected two ports full of family memories.
One reason Ben Price’s Facebook page has tens of thousands of followers is that he’s something of an amateur sleuth. He uses the social media platform to track down the owners of family heirlooms he saves from the tip.
Often they’re quite valuable; others simply precious for their sentimental value.
The most money he’s found was $55,000. He’d been sitting on it.
“The old Italian bloke who’d owned the house had stuffed the cash into his couch,” Mr Price recalled.
“Funny thing was, we used to sit on it every day during smoko, so it was the last thing to leave.
“But, it wouldn’t fit on a truck going to the tip, so I had to get up and break it up.
“$50 notes started raining down like confetti.”
When he rang his clients, the late man’s children, they handed him a $5000 reward.
Which just proves that honesty pays – in many different ways.
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