GoPro returned to owner after falling from hot air balloon in 2019

A GoPro which fell from a hot-air balloon in 2019 has been found on a farm almost 190km away. See how the remarkable story unfolded.

Just how far can a GoPro go?

One turned up this week at the bottom of a feed trough at Te Mania Angus in Mortlake, Victoria.

It took a bit of detective work to get the answer, and it turns out a GoPro can go about 187.8km – as the crow (and hot air balloon) flies.

In 2019, the GoPro was in the hands of a hot-air balloon enthusiast flying over the Horsham countryside (187.8km away) when it fell more than 350m into a paddock below – to never be seen again.

Almost.

When stockperson Lilli Stewart at Te Mania Angus found the GoPro this week, the card inside was taken out and played. It showed shots in the balloon and had even recorded its own fall, crash landing and the paddock around it.

A year (and a bit) later the paddock was cut for hay and Te Mania Angus bought a load from the contractor.

Lilli Stewart from Te Mania Angus who found the GoPro on the farm this week.

“It was trucked to Mortlake, went through our mixer wagon, into the feed trough and the cows ate everything around it,” Te Mania Angus director Tom Gubbins told The Weekly Times.

“You could see the balloon and it showed a registration number. Our son Edward has friends who fly balloons and when he showed them; they identified it as belonging to Martin Tregale, who is a private owner,” Tom said.

“He was gobsmacked when we rang him; but he remembered the day the camera fell – he was flying with his son David and the camera was set on a bracket and it got bumped, so we are posting it back to him.

“The hay was originally cut for the export market, but as those bales are all X-rayed this one was rejected – almost certainly because the GoPro would have showed as a foreign object – so it almost went a lot further than Mortlake, to some foreign land.”

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