Ray May: Yarrawonga man reunited with lost wallet after 18 years

When a Yarrawonga man lost his wallet in 2004 he told his son to use an excavator to find it. Now, almost two decades later, he’s got it back.

A Yarrawonga tradie has been reunited with his missing wallet after losing it at work in Sorrento nearly two decades ago.

Ray May, 68, was working as an earthworks excavator operator in 2004 when he lost his wallet which had his ID, cards and $425 cash inside.

Mr May spent weeks searching for the wallet before he cut his losses.

That was until this week when the owner of the home stumbled across it.

Mr May said the owner was in the garden when they found the weather-damaged wallet, took it to police who handed it back to him.

“I was working that day (in 2004), and late in the day I realised that I’d lost it,” Mr May said.

“I had got fuel on the way down to work so I went back there to see if I’d left it on the counter ... so I rang my son Rodney and said ‘Can you come down here?’ so he jumped on the excavator and dug, but we couldn’t find it.

“I searched for it for weeks after.”

Ray May, 68, from Yarrawonga has been reunited with his wallet after almost 20 years. Picture: Supplied

Mr Ray’s belongings that were returned to him this week. Picture: Supplied

When Mr Ray got the phone call from police last week saying they had found it, he didn’t believe them.

“I got a phone call from the sergeant at Sorrento and I thought someone was having a lend of me,” he said.

“He said ‘You’re probably going to get a laugh out of this but did you lose a wallet a while ago?’

“And it was fair dinkum then. After eighteen years, it turned up.”

Mr May, now retired, lives in Yarrawonga with his wife Leonie who he plans to take out for dinner with the cash he’s now got back.

His son Rodney plans to make a glass case for the wallet as a keepsake.