A parcel sent to a New Zealand couple “Kay and Philip”—and addressed only to “a farm, situated up a long driveway with cows, opposite a pub or thereabouts”—reached its proper destination after help from social media.
According to a story published by The Guardian earlier this month, the letter was received by a service centre in New Zealand’s rural village of Cust, which is located on the country’s South Island between Oxford and Rangiora. The service centre offers postal services to Cust’s 450 residents. While it’s customary to return improperly addressed mail to the sender, manager Tammie McGrath decided to try finding the parcel’s rightful recipients by posting an image to Facebook.
“I could tell it had been written by an older person and I just thought, well, I’ll hang on to it for a couple of days before I send it back and see if I can find who it belongs to,” McGrath told The Guardian, adding more than 2,300 people shared the post.
“A couple of hours after I posted it on Facebook, a man came in and said, ‘I think we own this parcel.’ He gave me his details and said his name was Philip, and that while he didn’t live across from a pub, he lived down the road from one. He also showed me a card with a picture of his property on it, which showed a field with cows on it. He isn’t actually on Facebook, but people who know him who are on Facebook showed the post to him.”
The sender was Irene Meekings, a woman in her 70s that visited Kay and Philip’s home with her daughter-in-law for dinner. The parcel contained a handmade tea-towel and apron as thank-you gifts.