We lost a hearing aid

We went to Hobart's summer festival on the 30th of December 2007 and when we were about to go home we noticed that Raphael only had one hearing aid in. I was really tired but I couldn't just go back to Australian Hearing and say that I lost the hearing aid but didn't even look for it.
I didn't think that there was any hope for finding it. The summer festival stretched from parliament house lawns all the way along the docks. I think that I heard that there was an average attendance of 30,000 people per day to the festival but because that was the Sunday I think that there were more. I reckon that there were well over 50,000 people there and some areas were totally packed.

So with this impossibility of finding a needle in a haystack I trudged back along the path that we had walked scanning the ground hoping to see a scuffed, kicked or trodden on hearing aid. I asked stands along the way to locate the areas where lost property was kept. The first lost property that I found didn't have it, only an umbrella, a hat and a coat.

I was just about to give in but there was another lost property place to check and so I knocked on the the little temporary police hut's door. As I stepped in asking "has a baby's hearing aid been turned in..." I saw it sitting all by itself in the middle of the desk. It was in perfect condition, not stepped on, scuffed or kicked about; amazing! I had found some of my family during my search and they had joined in the hunt; when I showed them my success they were also amazed.
Apparently it was found on the parliament house lawns where we started our day in the festival. Interestingly I did not even look on the lawns because I thought that I had seen him with both hearing aids after we had left them but thank goodness someone picked it up and handed it to a policeman.

It was much quieter on the lawns by the time I took this photo as all of the activity had moved down to the docks.