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London: A postcard from Australia, sent from a time when Peter Weir’s film Gallipoli was in cinemas and Rick Springfield’s hit song Jesse’s Girl was No.1, has arrived at its destination 42 years on.

The card had been posted from Sydney to a house in Westgate, near Canterbury, in south-west England on August 27, 1981, and arrived this month.

The card was posted from Sydney in 1981 to a house in England’s south-west.

Samantha Williams, who now lives at the address in Elm Grove, said circumstances surrounding the postcard’s backstory, first reported by the BBC, remain a mystery. Williams said one of her children initially thought it was a Christmas card after picking it up.

Signed off by a man called Gerry, the postcard features a depiction of the Sydney Opera House, which at that time was less than 10 years old.

“It had been sent from a man called Gerry in Sydney and addressed to Steve Padgett or Padge, who we believe lived here with his parents in the 1980s,” she said.

Gerry, who gave his address as 1 Dawes Point, Sydney, 2000 appears to have had his own problems with receiving mail, telling his mate Padge that he’d only just read correspondence from him dated May 8 – more than three months earlier.

The postcard was addressed to Steve Padgett and included a handwritten message from “Gerry”.

“Sorry to have not been in touch, but what can you say about colonial practices!” he wrote, saying he was having a brilliant time and promised to write in detail the next day.

Williams said she’d love to find the man it was addressed to and give it to him.

“It’s only got a 35¢ stamp on it, so maybe it’s been stuck at a sorting office in Australia or in the UK for more than 40 years,” she said. “They were obviously good friends, and it may mean a lot to him.”

Britain’s troubled mail service, Royal Mail, has faced fierce backlash for delays and lost post amid mass strikes during the past 12 months.

In February, a flat in south London received a letter addressed to a previous tenant written in 1916, more than a century on, surprising the residence’s owner.

The letter, with a stamp bearing George V’s head, was addressed to Katie Marsh, who was married to stamp dealer Oswald Marsh and was sent by her friend Christabel Mennell, the daughter of wealthy local tea merchant Henry Tuke Mennell, during the height of the First World War.

In the letter, Mennell stated she felt “quite ashamed of myself after saying what I did”, and that she had been feeling “miserable here with a very heavy cold”.

A Royal Mail spokeswoman said it was difficult to speculate what may have happened with the postcard from Australia.

“It is likely that it was put back into the postal system by someone recently, rather than it being lost or stuck somewhere,” she said.

“Royal Mail regularly checks all its delivery offices and clears its processing machines daily. Once an item is in the postal system, then it will be delivered to the address on the card.”

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