Cab company searches for owner of photo album in lost and found

A photo album with images dating back decades has been found in a Gold Coast cab, and operators are keen to reunite the catalogue of memories with its owner.

The search is on to find the mystery owner of a historic photo album left in a Gold Coast taxi.

Filled with black and white school photos dating back almost 60 years, the album traces one student’s academic life from a blond-haired and grinning Grade 1 pupil to strapping senior high student towering over his classmates.

There are also what could be wedding photos of the man, smiling, dressed in a bow-tie.

The hunt is on to find the owner of a photo album, with school photos dating back to 1964. Picture: Adam Head

The album was discovered among lost property recently as taxi company 13cabs prepared to move its Gold Coast headquarters from Helensvale to Mermaid Beach.

“We’ve been unable to track down the album’s owner but thought it looked far too precious to just throw out,” 13cabs business development manager Simon Mahoney said.

“We’re hoping that by making a public appeal, we might be able to reunite the album with the man in the photos, or at least with a family member.

“The way the photos have been collected and displayed, showing every year of his school life, would suggest that they have great sentimental value.”

The uncaptioned photos start with the man’s first year of school at Darcy Road Public School in western Sydney in 1964. He’s also pictured in 1960s school photos at Toongabbie East Public School and later, in the 1970s, at Pendle Hill High School.

Another of the photos found in the album in 13cabs lost and found collection. Picture: Adam Head

There’s a photo of him and three other students with a bespectacled man who appears to be the Pendle Hill High principal, taken in 1970.

Intriguingly, the album also contains a typed list of what looks to be the man’s former schoolmates, with phone numbers and notations of what became of some of them. “Gone missing,” the list says of one woman.

‘West of the Nullabor,” it says of another.

“Midnight Express, Portugal,” it says of a man, in an apparent reference to the classic 1970s film about a drug smuggler busted and imprisoned in Turkey.

Mr Mahoney speculated: “Maybe he was trying to track down his old schoolmates for a reunion.” He said it was hoped to deliver the album to its owner – by cab, of course

Do you know this man? A photo left in the back of a Gold Coast cab. Picture: Adam Head