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WWI soldiers’ messages in a bottle found on Australian beach more than 100 years later
Letters from two WWI Australian soldiers found in a bottle after 109 years were written days into their voyage to Europe, linking descendants and preserving personal war history.
- On Oct. 9, 2025, the Brown family found a Schweppes-brand bottle just above the waterline at Wharton Beach during a beach clean-up.
- On August 15, 1916, Privates Malcolm Neville and William Harley wrote pencil letters aboard HMAT A70 Ballarat while en route from Adelaide; Harley wrote, `Somewhere in the Bight.`
- The glass appears unusually well preserved, with the Schweppes-brand bottle showing no barnacle growth and penciled, wet but legible letters likely buried in sand dunes at Wharton Beach until recent months’ huge swells dislodged it.
- Using online searches, Brown found Pte Neville's great-nephew Herbie Neville and notified the soldiers' descendants, who expressed surprise and deep emotion as the letters were passed on to their families.
- More broadly, the find came 109 years after the notes were cast, following other historic recoveries like the Sept. 4, 1892 lighthouse note and a 209-year-old Scottish lighthouse find.
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Century-Old Bottle Carries Soldiers' Messages from the Past
More than a century ago, two bored World War I Australian army recruits passed the time during their unit’s voyage to war-torn France by scrawling cheerful messages in pencil on […] The post Century-Old Bottle Carries Soldiers' Messages from the Past appeared first on The Western Journal.
·Phoenix, United States
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Messages placed in a bottle written by two Australian soldiers in 1916 were found better than a century later on the southwestern coast of the country.
·Romania
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A bottle thrown into the sea during the First World War, containing two letters of Australian soldiers leaving for France, has just been discovered. One hundred and nine years later, the texts were still kept in the small glass bottle.
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Total News Sources113
Leaning Left23Leaning Right14Center33Last UpdatedBias Distribution47% Center
Bias Distribution
- 47% of the sources are Center
47% Center
L 33%
C 47%
R 20%
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