Source: Radio New Zealand
The ring found by Garth. Supplied / Garth Walton
A shiny diamond engagement ring has found its way out of a deep creek buried by sand thanks to a community of metal detectorists – the volunteer heroes of New Zealand’s lost and found.
Bits of gold, silver, diamond, coins, rings and a lot of less desirable trash sit just below the ground across Aotearoa creating a boom of hobbyists.
Garth Walton bought his first metal detector in 2018.
It all started with some YouTube videos and now nearly a decade later, he had found and reunited priceless and countless heirlooms and jewellery with their owners.
Most recently he tackled an underwater rescue, something he had not tried before and was not necessarily prepared for.
He heard about a woman who was at a Hamilton swimming hole along the Kaniwhaniwha Track when her engagement ring went missing.
Walton spoke to the couple, got rough whereabouts and gave it a crack.
“I’ve actually never underwater detected before, so I didn’t have the gear.
“I just had some goggles and snorkel and, and my detector can detect underwater.”
The location where Garth was searching. Supplied / Garth Walton
He said the area was packed with people, another thing he had not done before.
“I don’t usually like to detect in front of lots of people … but I tend to go out at night and detect so that I’m not getting in anybody’s face or anything.”
Walton spent about an hour in the water, struggling to hear the machine while submerged.
At one stage he was in about seven feet deep, well over his head, with no luck other than a few laundry tokens.
“I was getting really cold and so I thought ‘I’m gonna call it quits now’ and so as I was getting out of the water I thought ‘I’ll just go back this way quickly and have a look’…
“I got up to waist deep and and then I got a really good signal there.”
He used his pinpointer – a small handheld device to get a closer reading.
“I stuck it in the sand and I felt the ring, and I pulled it out and I was like whoa.
“By that time, everybody had left … So I let out a woohoo.”
He said it was buried right in the sand.
“I was shaking like a chihuahua in the rain,” with the cold – and excitement, he said.
“It’s always a great feeling, you know, and those guys were so grateful.”
The ring found by Garth. Supplied / Garth Walton
Owner of the ring, Kaela Ivory-Taranaki, was in awe of Walton – “I just still can’t believe it.”
“I honestly didn’t think that it would be returned … Like I thought, it was gone forever.”
Walton circled a picture of where he found it.
Even more magical, she said, it was exactly where she dropped it.
Unfortunately, Walton’s gear was not as waterproof as it was supposed to be and he was still waiting for his gear to dry out.
Digging deep in the ground, and research
While an impressive feat, it still was not his favourite find.
In 2023 Walton found an RSA badge buried in Hamilton’s Steel Park.
The RSA badge Garth found. Supplied / Garth Walton
He noticed it had the soldier’s number on it, pushing him and some friends to become a different kind of detective.
The soldier wearing the RSA badge in his wedding photo. Supplied / Garth Walton
“We sort of went and dug deep in and did some research … we found out it was a soldier from World War I.”
From here they traced the soldier from the Auckland Cenotaph, Taranaki and Tuakau, traipsing through burial records, eventually locating his grandson.
“When we met him he had all his grandad’s badges on the table and photographs and funny thing is that his grandad in his wedding photo had that badge on. The badge that I found.
“He was so stoked … it was quite emotional.”
Community of detectives
Walton, like most detectorists, helped people out of the goodness of his heart.
He said some people made money off their finds, but if they came across something valuable or looked important with markings, they would try and return it to its owner.
There was a small but growing community of metal detectorists.
Pages like NZ Ring Finder got requests from people across Aotearoa, which were then sent out to the catalogue of hobbyists to see who was closest to them.
Another one was Andrew Harding from Wellington Metal Detecting. He set up the page to share his finds and help people in the area with their lost belongings.
He and his friends had found and returned three lost ring to their owners in the past month.
But mostly, it was just a hobby.
Harding had taken such an interest he cross referenced maps from the 1930s with today’s Google Maps, allowing him to find places where people once might have gathered.
Metal detectorist Andrew Harding. Supplied / Andrew Harding
“Probably my favourite one, the most noble one is … I’m not going to say where, because it’s a bit like fishing, you don’t disclose your spots.
“But it was two full gold sovereigns in the one hole, along with two half crowns, a shilling, six pence, and thruppence, and they were all from 1880.”
In today’s spot prices that was a fair whack of money.
But there was a knack to it.
“A lot of people think you can just turn it on and go, but it’s nothing like that at all.
“They get a lot of interference in Wi-Fi.”
He had a failed mission last week in Karori where it had initially sounded simple.
“The woman had lost her ring gardening.
“But she forgot to tell me that everything was concrete with rebar in it. So pretty much all concrete has steel reinforcing in it. So you can’t detect.
“It’s impossible to narrow it down.”
The other surprising find was his new love of history and coins.
A find of Andrew Harding’s. Supplied / Andrew Harding
Holding up the oldest coin he had found, a 1650 Chinese coin, Harding said many of the Wellington settlers brought these coins with them and wore them as a good luck charm.
“I never did history at school, but I could tell you everything about coin denominations and the monarchy and whose heads on it.
“There’s a guy with the funny haircut there’s the guy with the wheelchair which is actually not, it’s a chariot and then there’s the guy with the big forehead … I have all sorts of names for them.”
But among the treasures there was always trash. Harding gets permission to scour Wellington City Council sites.
“For every time you go detecting, you’re probably pulling out a couple of kilos of cans and glass and bottle tops and needles, even a lot of needles, razor blades, nails, lead head nails.”
And against what people might think, they did not detect deep – about 40 centimeters at most and left the ground in mint condition.
For any budding detectorists, Harding’s advice – start at home.
“Most people don’t realise what is on their properties and where the best place is actually clotheslines because you know for hundreds of years people have been hanging stuff on clotheslines with coins and pockets and rings.
“Clotheslines are just like a gold mine”
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
