Two WWI Soldiers’ Letters Found in a Bottle on Australian Beach
A family cleaning rubbish off a Western Australian beach has stumbled upon an extraordinary piece of history — a glass bottle containing messages written by two Australian soldiers as they sailed to World War I, more than a century ago.
Deb Brown and her family were riding their quad bikes along Wharton Beach near Esperance earlier this month when they spotted what looked like an old Schweppes bottle in the sand. “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,” Ms Brown said.
Inside the thick glass were two pencil-written letters, still readable after 109 years. Dated August 15th, 1916, the notes were written by Privates Malcolm Neville, 28, and William Harley, 37 — just a few days after their ship, the HMAT Ballarat, left Adelaide for France. The bottle was marked as being tossed “somewhere in the Bight,” referring to the Great Australian Bight — a vast stretch of ocean off southern Australia.
Oceanographer Professor Charitha Pattiaratchi from the University of Western Australia believes the bottle may have been buried and preserved by shifting dunes. “It probably would have been a few weeks, it could have even been a month before it actually got to Wharton Beach,” he explained. “Once it got to the beach it could have stayed there and got buried in the sand, so it could have been there for 100 years.”
What was in the letters?
Private Neville wrote cheerfully to his mother Robertina back home in Wilkawatt, South Australia. He said the food was “real good,” except for “one meal which we buried at sea,” and added that they were “as happy as Larry.” Months later, he was killed in action in France.
Private Harley, who had lost his mother years earlier, wrote instead to the unknown finder of his message. “May the finder be as well as we are at present,” he said. Harley was wounded twice in the war but survived, later dying in 1934 from cancer that his family believes was caused by being gassed in the trenches.
Relatives of soldiers stunned by discovery
Ms Brown said the bottle was in “pristine condition,” with no barnacles or sun damage, and that the paper, though damp, was still intact. After the discovery, she began tracking down the soldiers’ families. Using the address on Neville’s note, she found his great-nephew, Herbie Neville. “All I did was type in Neville and Wilkawatt, those two words, and Herbie’s profile came up,” she said.
Herbie called the experience “unbelievable,” especially for his 101-year-old aunt Marian Davies, who remembers her uncle leaving for war and never coming back. “It sounds as though he was pretty happy to go to the war. It’s just so sad what happened,” he said.
Harley’s granddaughter Ann Turner said her family was “absolutely stunned” by the find. “It really does feel like a miracle and we do very much feel like our grandfather has reached out for us from the grave,” she said. She added, “I feel very emotional when I see that the other young man had a mother to write to… whereas our grandfather long ago had lost his mother so he just writes it to the finder of the bottle.”
Ms Brown said reading the letters was deeply moving. “This poor darling had gone off, not knowing what he was about to face, and he seemed quite chipper in the letter,” she said. “It was very emotional.”
The letters have now been passed on to the soldiers’ descendants — two families brought together by a century-old message from the sea.
