Palm Beach Currumbin: Hunt for school’s missing 1976 time capsule

The hunt is on to find buried treasure on the Gold Coast. Something particularly valuable, which was buried 45 years ago, is missing and experts have been brought in to find its resting place.

The search to uncover a missing time capsule buried at Palm Beach Currumbin High School almost fifty years ago has kept Karen Preston on her toes in recent weeks.

Initially thought to be buried near the school’s main office back in 1974, renovations and new pathways developed in the years since have effectively rendered the container and its sentimental relics lost – for now.

While Ms Preston, a well-known metal recovery detection specialist, remains “optimistic” about locating the capsule, she admits her efforts to date which include scouring a significant portion of land have proved in vain.

Kazz Preston has been hired by the PBC to try and find a missing time capsule from 1976. . Picture: Mike Batterham

“I’ve been there a few times over the past month so far for several hours, we’ve gone back and forward over the area that we believe the capsules to be in,” she said.

“There are a couple of original teachers at PBC who have vague memories of where it was buried but not what was in it,” she said, suspecting coins from the era as well as newspaper and magazine clippings to be among some of the treasures inside.

The time capsule was buried in 1976 Picture: Jerad Williams

“At this stage, I’ve detected the whole front of the school from all the admin blocks right through and I’ve pulled out big heavy sinkers and lots of coins, some going back to the 70s.”

The latest project is among hundreds of retrieval missions Ms Preston’s undertaken in her five years since working in the metal detection industry, influenced by grandparents and father.

“It’s been an incredible hobby, I like to call it as history under your feet,” she said.

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“I’ve found some incredible things over the years, it’s amazing. One of the most incredible finds was a love token from WWII that a soldier would have brought back for his sweetheart.”

The Gold Coast has a long history of time capsules. This was buried at Surfers Paradise in 2013. Picture: Jono Searle.

Though her usual workload involves the recovery of wedding rings using a metal detector, it appears more heavy-duty equipment like an excavator will be required to locate the school’s elusive time capsule.

“Unfortunately there were no official records, there was a plaque placed where one of the capsules was but when they put in a new footpath the plaque was moved and put on a building and one knows what happened to the capsule,” Ms Preston said.

“(We’ll be) scraping back layers, a couple of inches at a time, very slowly taking back a few layers, then I’ll run the detector over the top of the area before we take a bit more off and slowly repeat the process,” she added, describing the gruelling process to come.

“Hopefully we’ll get lucky and be able to very gentle pry it from the ground.

Time capsules often disintegrated underground when buried for an extended period, Ms Preston explained, meaning there could be little leftover even if the search proves successful.

“It’s hard, because it’s been there so long, and because we’ve already done hours and hours detecting of the areas that they previously knew of but I’m hopeful,” she said.

Originally published as Palm Beach Currumbin: Hunt for school’s missing 1976 time capsule