These messages from World War II soldiers were found in a bottle on an Australian beach more than 100 years later

The main photo for this article, provided by Deb Brown, shows a bottle with letters inside, in Condingup, Australia

More than a century later, messages from two Australian soldiers were found on the coast of Australia. They were inside a bottle, which was thrown into the sea a few days after the start of their journey, which was destined for the battlefields of France during the First World War.

It was the Brown family who found the bottle, from the Schweppes brand, next to the water line at Wharton beach, near Esperance, in the state of Western Australia, on October 9th, explains Deb Brown.

Husband Peter and daughter Felicity made the discovery during one of the family’s regular quad bike expeditions to clear rubbish from the beach.

“We do a lot of cleanup on our beaches. So we would never ignore that piece of trash. That little bottle was there, waiting to be picked up,” recalls Deb Brown.

Inside the glass, which was clear and thick, were letters, written in a cheerful tone, in pencil, by soldiers Malcolm Neville, aged 27, and William Harley, aged 37. The missives were dated August 15, 1916.

The troop transport ship HMAT A70 Ballarat had sailed from Adelaide, the capital of the eastern state of South Australia, on August 12 of that year. He was on a long journey to the other side of the world, where these soldiers would reinforce the 48th Australian Infantry Battalion on the Western Front in Europe.

Neville was killed in action a year later. Harley was injured twice, but survived the war, dying in Adelaide in 1934 from cancer that, according to this soldier’s family, was caused by the gas he inhaled in the German trenches.

Neville asked whoever discovered the bottle to deliver the letter to his mother, Robertina Neville, who lived in Wilkawat, which is now a practically abandoned town in South Australia. Harley, whose mother had already died in 1916, was satisfied if the person who discovered the bottle kept his note.

“I hope whoever finds this bottle is as well as we are,” Harley wrote.

Neville wanted his mother to know that he was “having a lot of fun”, that “the food, so far, has been very good, with the exception of one meal” that ended up “buried at sea”.

The ship “rocks and rolls and rolls, but we are as happy as Larry,” wrote Neville, using a long-out-of-use Australian colloquial expression meaning to be very happy.

Neville further wrote that he and his companions were “somewhere at sea”. Harley noted that they were “somewhere in the bay”, in reference to the Great Australian Bight. It is a huge open bay that begins east of Adelaide and extends to Esperance, in the far west.

Deb Brown suspects the bottle didn’t travel very far. Probably, he says, it spent more than a century buried in the sand dunes. Major dune erosion, caused by huge waves at Wharton Beach in recent months, will have displaced it.

Even though the paper was wet, it was still possible to read what was written. Therefore, Deb Brown was able to notify the soldiers’ families about this find.

The bottle “is in perfect condition”, he describes. And he adds: “there is no limpet. I believe that, if it had been in the sea, or exposed for so long, the paper would have disintegrated in the sun. We would not have been able to read anything”, he argues.

Harley’s granddaughter, Ann Turner, says the family was “absolutely amazed” by this discovery.

“We can’t believe it. It really feels like a miracle. We feel like our grandfather was able to touch us from beyond the grave,” says Turner to the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

Neville’s great-nephew, Herbie Neville, says the family came together thanks to this “unbelievable” discovery.

“Apparently he was quite happy to go to war. It’s so sad what happened. It’s so sad that he lost his life like that”, laments Herbie Neville.

“Wow, he was a great man,” the great-nephew adds proudly.