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Messages written by two people in a bottle Australian soldiers for a few days in their visit to the battlefields France They have been found off the coast of Australia more than a century later, during World War I.
Deb Brown said Tuesday that the Brown family found the Schweppes-brand bottle just above the waterline on Oct. 9 at Wharton Beach near Esperance in the state of Western Australia.
her husband peter And daughter Felicity made the discovery during one of the family’s regular quad bike expeditions to clean up trash from the beach.
“We do a lot of cleanup on our beaches and so we never go near a piece of trash. So this little bottle was just sitting there waiting to be picked up,” said Deb Brown.
Inside the clear, thick glass were cheerful letters written in pencil by Privates Malcolm Neville, 27, and William Harley, 37, on August 15, 1916.
His military ship HMAT A70 had left Ballarat South Australia state capital adelaide On 12 August that year he embarked on a long journey east to the other side of the world where his troops would reinforce the 48th Australian Infantry Battalion on the Western Front in Europe.
Neville was killed in action a year later. Harley was wounded twice but survived the war, dying of cancer in Adelaide in 1934, his family saying he died after being gassed by the Germans in the trenches.
Neville requested the bottle’s finder to deliver his letter to his mother Robertina Neville in Wilkawatt, now a virtual ghost town in South Australia. Harley, whose mother had died in 1916, was happy for the explorer to keep his note.
Harley wrote, “May the explorer be as good as we are at the moment.”
Neville wrote to his mother that he was “having a really good time, the food so far really good, except one meal which we buried in the sea.”
“The ship was rocking and rolling, but we’re as happy as Larry,” Neville wrote, using Australian slang for very happy.
Neville wrote that he and his companions were, “somewhere at sea.” Harley wrote that they were “somewhere in the Bight”, referring to the Great Australian Bight. It is a vast open bay that starts east of Adelaide and extends to Esperance on the western shore.
Deb Brown suspects the bottle didn’t go very far. It may have spent more than a century buried in the sand dunes on the coast. Extensive erosion of the dunes due to heavy swells along Wharton Beach in recent months may have caused it to collapse.
The paper was wet, but the writing remained legible. Because of that, Deb Brown was able to inform relatives of both soldiers about the discovery.
He said, “The bottle is in perfect condition. There is no growth of any barnacles on it. I believe that if it had been in the sea or remained open for so long, the paper would have disintegrated from the sun. We would not have been able to read it.”
Harley’s granddaughter Ann Turner said her family was “absolutely shocked” by the discovery.
“We can’t believe it. It really feels like a miracle and we feel like our grandfather has come out of the grave for us,” Turner told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
Neville’s nephew Herbie Neville said the “incredible” discovery had brought his family together.
Herbie Neville said, “It seems like he was very happy going to war. It’s very sad what happened. It’s very sad that he lost his life.”
“Wow. What a man he was,” said the elder nephew proudly.