A century after it was tossed into the Australian Bight, a glass bottle containing cheerful messages from two World War I Australian soldiers has washed up on a remote Western Australian beach, creating an “unbelievable” link to the past for their descendants.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!The Schweppes-brand bottle was discovered by the Brown family on Wharton Beach near Esperance on October 9, while they were clearing trash. Experts believe the bottle was not lost at sea for long, but instead lay buried and preserved in the sand dunes until recent erosion unearthed it.
Inside were legible, pencil-written notes dated August 15, 1916, penned just three days into the long voyage of the troopship HMAT A70 Ballarat to the Western Front in France.
| Soldier | Age (in 1916) | The Message | Fate |
| Private Malcolm Neville | 27 | Wrote to his mother, Robertina, saying, “I am having a real good time… we are as happy as Larry.” He asked the finder to deliver his letter. | Killed in action a year later. |
| Private William Harley | 37 | Wrote a general note to the finder, wishing them well and allowing them to keep it as a memento. | Survived the war after being wounded twice, but died in 1934 from cancer his family attributes to being gassed in the trenches. |
The finder, Deb Brown, successfully tracked down the soldiers’ relatives. Private Harley’s granddaughter, Ann Turner, was “absolutely stunned,” describing the find as a “miracle” and saying it felt like her grandfather had “reached out for us from the grave.”
The discovery paints a poignant picture of the young men’s optimism just before they joined the brutal fighting of the 48th Australian Infantry Battalion.
