One of the cool things about the internet is that almost everyone is just one email away. The tricky part is figuring out the right email address. That’s why one Aussie turned to Reddit to see if they could help find the owner of a travel diary more than twenty years on.
Redditor David Ryan — who posts under the name u/DoubleRiver — shared photographs of a diary that he said he found in his rental.
“I found someone’s amazing travel journal. Please help me get it back to its original author. It was sitting in the top cupboard of an apartment I rented in Yarraville. It was written mostly in 99-2000 and it makes me feel weirdly free perusing it. I bet the author would love to relive these memories,” he wrote.
I found someone’s amazing travel journal. Please help me get it back to its original author. It was sitting in the top cupboard of an apartment I rented in Yarraville. It was written mostly in 99-2000 and it makes me feel weirdly free perusing it. I bet the author would love to relive these memories from australia
Photographs of the diary posted to Reddit showed raw confessions, diagrams, even pasted-in foreign currency from across Asia.
Between comments about the front page (which read “If you’re about to read this BLOODY DON’T”) and jokes about some of the scribblings, the always eagle-eyed Redditors identified a few leads based on names in the travel diary.
Ryan would respond by sharing updates in the comments of his posts, saying where he was chasing.
Finally, a promising lead led Ryan to a band, Ziko, and a few of the band members. Ryan found a Facebook account bearing the same name as someone in the band. So, Ryan messaged them.
“After several days of dead silence across the board, I finally got a response from one of the people I messaged on Facebook who shares the same name as a member of the band. This person now lives in Germany so I was not certain it was the right guy. Anyway, they just replied with “try g**********@gmail.com”,” he wrote.
After a few days, another post popped up on r/Australia titled “UPDATE: I found someone’s amazing travel journal, and r/australia helped me find its original author. Link to original thread in the comments.”
Ryan was able to track down the original owner, Nick Boyle, and shared their correspondence.
UPDATE: I found someone’s amazing travel journal, and r/australia helped me find its original author. Link to original thread in the comments. ???? from australia
“Oh my god! Finally!!” Ryan wrote.
Boyle shared his gratitude to both Ryan and the Redditors who helped, noting that his complete lack of social media presence made it a difficult task.
“I will post this on Monday, and hopefully you’ll have it back by this week,” Ryan finished.