One note, a rusty Ute and an extraordinary act of care

Amid boxes of papers and decades of memories, an Estate Manager uncovered a touching connection between a boy and a Ute. Here’s how one simple act of curiosity and compassion translated into a story that fulfilled a man’s childhood dream.

When Equity Trustees Estate Manager Diana May first walked into the Adelaide home of a long-time client who had recently passed away, she didn’t expect that among the decades of neatly kept papers, she’d uncover such a touching story.

“It looked like she had kept every letter and every note ever made,” Diana says. “There were boxes and boxes of correspondence dating back to the 1950s. We brought everything back to the office to search for her original will, which we eventually found. But in the process, we came across something else: a handwritten note from a neighbour asking if he could buy the old Holden Ute sitting in her driveway.”

At first, the note was just a quaint discovery – a small detail about someone’s life that was read and appreciated. “It was written in 2017, three years after the woman’s husband had passed away. The neighbour said he’d love to buy the Ute from her, but she’d never responded. We didn’t think much more of it at that moment, and so we put the note aside.”

Weeks later, as Diana prepared the estate for auction, that small note came to mind again. The auction house had arranged to sell the old Ute for scrap. Although the Ute was once the prized possession of the household, it hadn’t been driven in years and was in poor condition. But something about that letter stayed with Diana, and she wondered about the author of that note.
“Someone said to me, ‘Why don’t you just give the guy a call?’ It had been years and I thought he had probably changed his number. But I rang anyway.” To Diana’s amazement, the author of the note picked up. “I said, ‘I hope you don’t think this is strange, but I’ve got a note from 2017 written by you about a Ute…’ He just burst out laughing with joy.”

The mysterious author turned out to be a man who, as a child, had grown up down the street dreaming about that car. “As a boy, he’d watched the lady’s husband, who ran a lawn-mowing business, drive that same Holden Ute around the neighbourhood. Back then, the boy and the Ute owner spoke many times, and often about the vehicle. The boy’s childhood dream was to own the Ute as an adult.” 

Diana realised that, to the man on the other end of the phoneline, the Ute was not a piece of junk to be sold for scrap. It was his childhood inspiration. So when she told the man that the Ute was finally going up for public auction, he was thrilled. “I gave him the link to the online auction and that was that,” she says. “I then visited the house on the day all the auction purchases were collected. I saw a man loading the Ute onto a trailer. I soon discovered that he was the successful bidder who bought the Ute of his dreams! He was beaming with joy.”

The proud new owner told Diana he planned to restore the car as a tribute to the couple who had owned it. “He even asked if he could have the note back so he could show his kids the story behind the Ute.”

In the end, one simple phone call made all the difference – not just emotionally, but financially too. “The estate got a much better price because the man really wanted that Ute. It just felt right. 
“In our job, we honour people’s lives, their memories and the connections they’ve built over a lifetime. We really do believe that every estate tells a story.”

"In our job, we honour people’s lives, their memories and the connections they’ve built over a lifetime."