Sandy and Thomson Axle.
Camera IconSandy and Thomson Axle. Credit: Supplied/Supplied

Lost ring takes couple full circle to second marriage

Sophie Gabrielle, The AdvocateThe Advocate

Axle Thomson gave the ring to future wife Sandy in 1968.

A few months later, while water-skiing at Lake Mears, south east of Beverley, Sandy felt the ring slip off her finger and drop into the lake. She never thought she would see it again.

‘He gave me the ring when I was 16 and he was 20,’ Sandy recalled this week.

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‘I came off the skis and felt it slip off. I felt terrible ” I had only had it for a couple of months.’

Sandy never bothered to look for the ring in the deep lake because she thought recovery was ‘impossible’.

The pair married in 1970 and had a son and a daughter.

They remained together for 37 years but eventually drifted apart and divorced in 2007.

However, a family crisis when their son fell into a diabetic coma brought them back together again in 2010.

Axle proposed to Sandy for a second time in 2011 and they remarried in July of last year.

Sandy, now 61, said it was shared love for their son that enabled the couple to be reunited.

‘We just thought, ‘we have to stick together for our son,’ ‘ she said.

Earlier this month, Sandy and Axle (65) were driving past Lake Mears and noticed it had dried up.

They quickly decided to try their luck and look for the long lost ring with a metal detector. ‘I never forgot about that ring,’ Sandy said. ‘It meant so much to us both.’

After spending most of the day searching they were about to give up.

‘Then I heard the detector make a different noise and I said ‘wait that sounded a bit different’,’ Sandy said.

About 80 metres from what used to be the shore, she scraped over the area from which the sound emitted with a shovel and saw a glint of gold.

They had found the missing ring.

‘I couldn’t believe it,’ Sandy said. ‘It was just incredible.

‘It was like we had gone full circle. It was just meant to be.’

Axle said he did not believe his wife at first when she looked up and told him they had found it.

‘I said ‘there’s no way that’s the ring’. I didn’t believe her,’ he said.

‘We’re stuck with each other now. We will be together forever.’