WWI messages in a bottle found on Australian beach

A discovery on an Australian beach has unearthed a poignant connection to the First World War. Messages in a bottle, penned by two soldiers en route to the French battlefields, were found more than a century after they were cast into the sea. The find was made by the Brown family on 9 October.

- ROD MCGUIRK

While on one of their regular quad bike expeditions to clear rubbish from Wharton Beach, near Esperance in Western Australia, Deb and Peter Brown and their daughter Felicity spotted a Schweppes-brand bottle just above the waterline.

“We do a lot of cleaning up on our beaches and so would never go past a piece of rubbish. So this little bottle was lying there waiting to be picked up,” Deb Brown said.

Inside the clear, thick glass, cheerful letters, dated 15 August 1916, were found. They were written in pencil by privates Malcolm Neville, 27, and William Harley, 37.

Their troop ship, HMAT A70 Ballarat, had left the South Australia state capital, Adelaide, to the east on 12 August of that year on the long journey to the other side of the world, where its soldiers would reinforce the 48th Australian Infantry Battalion on Europe’s Western Front.