Someone is looking after me

It is day 4 of our Queensland holiday and we have had a great time so far. Kevin has been writing about things we have done in our family blog. But today I have an incredible story.

We checked out of our Brisbane hotel before 10 am and set off for Ipswich, where there is a Railway Museum and, more importantly for me, an exhibition of historical Australian quilts from the collection of Annette Gero.

We enjoyed our museum visit (we are both fans of technology museums) and went into Ipswich itself. We found a parking spot and I pulled out my purse to give the assorted small change to Kevin for parking, then I set off to the Art Gallery to look at the quilts. They are lovely, especially the 19th C crazy quilts, but the one I found most graphically interesting was one made by a man. He was a tailor for an army regiment in the Second World War and the quilt consists of 1200 (?) colour patches from the regiment stitched to a grey Army blanket. It is not quite finished and you can see the blanket, but the regimented red and shades of blue coloured patches are visually very impressive - it looks like a painting from the distance. Photography was not allowed or I would have taken one of that.

After I had finished my visit we set off for the Gold Coast and our next stop. We had got about 50 km from Ipswich when I suggested to Kevin that some food and drink would be a good idea. We pulled into a shopping centre and I went to pull my purse from my handbag. It wasn't there! Panic! We remembered the small change episode. I must have dropped it then. What to do? We went straight back to Ipswich. On the way I rang the Art Gallery - no luck there.

Once in Ipswich Kevin looked in bins near where we had parked and went to the Art Gallery to check again. No luck. So last resource - go to the Police Station. It was hard to find - it had moved from where it was on the road directory we had. I joined the queue - people wanting to pay fines and another lady reporting another lost wallet. Finally I got to speak to an officer. Just as I started on my story, the officer taking the other lady's details asked my name. They had my purse - completely intact, including more than $200 in cash. It had been picked up by an elderly lady. She was supposed to have written me a message and left it in the purse, but I can't find it. I am going to ring the police station tomorrow to try to get a contact for her. She is an angel and I want to acknowledge her.