Esther Imonmion
Messages in a bottle written by two Australian soldiers in 1916 have been discovered more than a century later on the country’s south-western coast, according to the Associated Press.
The historic find was made on October 12, 2025, on Wharton Beach, near Esperance in Western Australia, by local resident Deb Brown and her family during one of their regular quad bike trips to clean up litter along the shoreline.
The cheerful notes inside the bottle were penned just days into the soldiers’ voyage to join the battlefields of France during World War One.
One of the men, Private Malcolm Neville, wrote to his mother describing the food on board as “real good” and saying they were “as happy as Larry.” Months later, he was killed in action at the age of 28. The other soldier, Private William Harley, aged 37, survived the war and returned home.
The letters have since been passed on to their descendants, who were stunned by the discovery.
“We do a lot of cleaning up on our beaches and would never go past a piece of rubbish. This little bottle was just lying there waiting to be picked up,” Ms Brown told the Associated Press on Tuesday.
Although the paper was wet, both letters were still legible. Ms Brown then began searching for the soldiers’ families to return the messages.
She was able to locate Pte Neville’s great-nephew, Herbie Neville, by searching online using the soldier’s name and hometown, as his mother’s address had been included in the note.
Mr Neville described the discovery as “unbelievable,” especially for 101-year-old Marian Davies, Pte Neville’s niece, who still remembers her uncle leaving for war and never coming back.
The second letter, written by Pte Harley, was addressed “to the finder of the bottle,” as his mother had died years earlier.
His granddaughter, Ann Turner, said she and the soldier’s four other surviving grandchildren were “absolutely stunned” by the message.
“It really does feel like a miracle — like our grandfather has reached out to us from the grave,” she told ABC News.
Pte Harley’s letter noted that the bottle was thrown overboard “somewhere in the Bight,” referring to the Great Australian Bight off the southern coast.
An oceanography professor told ABC that the bottle may have only been in the water for a few weeks before washing up at Wharton Beach, where it likely remained buried in the sand for around 100 years.