'Mystery' postcard from Australia arrives in UK after 42 years

A postcard has arrived in the United Kingdom more than four decades after it was sent from Sydney, Australia.

The postcard was addressed to Steve Padgett at an address in Elm Grove, Westgate-on-Sea in the United Kingdom.

According to the stamp on the postcard, it was sent on August 27, 1981. Although, it did not arrive at that location until the end of 2023, which is now 42 years after it was sent!

No-one by the name of Steve Padgett now lives at the address, so the postcard was collected by the current resident, Samantha Williams.

Ms Williams thought she was collecting a Christmas card when it arrived in her mailbox.

"It had been sent from a man called Gerry in Sydney and addressed to Steve Padgett or Padge, who we believe lived here with his parents in the 1980s," Ms Williams told the BBC.

"It's only got a 32 cent stamp on it, so maybe it's been stuck at a sorting office in Australia or in the UK for more than 40 years."

When contacted by the BBC, a spokesperson for the United Kingdom's Royal Mail said it would be difficult to speculate on how the decades-old postcard came to make its way into Ms Williams' letterbox.

"It is likely that it was put back into the postal system by someone recently, rather than it being lost or stuck somewhere," the spokeswoman said.

"Royal Mail regularly checks all its delivery offices and clears its processing machines daily.

"Once an item is in the postal system then it will be delivered to the address on the card."

Ms Williams is now hoping to re-unite the hand-written postcard with its intended recipient.

"We would love to find the man it was addressed to and give it to him," she said.

"They were obviously good friends and it may mean a lot to him."