Serendipitous moments are rarely recorded, but this one’s worth writing home about because a postcard mailed 79 years ago to my great-grandmother in Washington, DC, ended up in a second-hand bookshop in Fyshwick and into my hands.

How this postcard with just a one-cent stamp of the first US president, George Washington, travelled from the American capital to Australia’s capital is a mystery.

Here’s what we know: The postcard has a photo of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on the front, where my great-uncle taught. It was posted by my great-aunt from Massachusetts on 29 September 1946 to my great-grandmother in Washington, DC.

Its final destination, however, was Lifeline Canberra’s Book Lovers Lane at the Fyshwick Fresh Food Markets in May 2025. The 15,934km, 79-year journey in between is anyone’s guess.

My great-grandmother only visited Australia once in 1936 to visit her newly-born Australian grandchild (my mother) in South Australia. Perhaps she carried the postcard with her and used it as a bookmark while travelling by ship (a slow five-week journey from the US), which then possibly got left behind and landed in a charity bin.

Maybe a deltiologist (one who collects postcards) purchased the card in the US and their collection was eventually sold to an overseas collector? There are so many possible scenarios, but we will never know.

The burning question, however, is how did I happen to be in the right place at exactly the right time to pick up a long-lost relative’s correspondence? I only visit Book Lovers Lane sporadically, when I’m in the neighbourhood and in need of a good book to read.

I occasionally rifle through old postcards, but I’ll only buy one if it has an interesting stamp or a historic snapshot of a bygone era. On this occasion, I was simply taken by the old-fashioned cursive handwriting with lovely swirls, so I purchased the card for a dollar.

It wasn’t until I arrived home that I noticed the surname on the card’s address was Ruge, which I recognised from my family tree, but I dismissed the idea – the probability of it actually being a relative was probably a billion to one. Out of mild curiosity, I posted the card to my mother, who then posted it to her American cousin (whose mother wrote the postcard in 1946) and there you have it – a well-travelled postcard and a great dinner-party story.

As for the contents of the letter, there were no amazing revelations or family secrets, just a loving note between a daughter and her mother about everyday life and looking forward to a visit.    

Charity bookshops often turn up unexpected treasures – love dedications, old diaries, carefully-folded money – and apparently Lifeline volunteers at Book Lovers Lane are instructed to always open a book, turn it upside down and give it a good shake to see what falls out. In this case, on the counter of Book Lovers Lane, it was a precious glimpse into my great-aunt’s and great-grandmother’s lives on the other side of the world, 79 years ago.