Messages from the First World War soldiers found in a bottle on an Australian beach: Their family touched

A “Schweppes” bottle was found just above the waterline on Warton Beach near Esperance in Western Australia by Peter Braun, who was on one of his regular family quad bike trips with his daughter Felicity to clean the beach of litter, his wife Deb Braun confirmed to AP.

“We clean our beaches a lot, and that’s why we would never walk past a piece of trash. So this little bottle was just lying there, waiting for us to pick it up,” Deb Braun said.

Inside the thick, clear glass were cheerful pencil-written letters from Privates Malcolm Nevil (27) and William Harley (37), dated August 15, 1916.

Their military ship, HMAT A70 Ballarat, had departed Adelaide, the capital of South Australia, on August 12 of that year for the long journey across the world, where Australian soldiers were heading to reinforce the 48th Australian Infantry Battalion on the Western Front in Europe.

Nevil was killed in action a year later, while Harley was wounded twice but survived the war, eventually dying in Adelaide in 1934.

Nevil asked that whoever found the bottle deliver his letter to his mother, Robertina Nevil, in Wilcawatt, which is now practically a ghost town in South Australia. Harley, whose mother had passed away by 1916, wrote that he would be happy if the finder preserved his message.

Harley’s granddaughter, Ann Turner, said her family was “absolutely stunned” to find her grandfather’s message in the bottle.

“We simply cannot believe it. It really feels like a miracle, and it truly feels as if our grandfather reached out to us from beyond the grave,” Turner told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Nevil’s great-grandnephew, Herbie Nevil, said the discovery had brought his family together in an “incredible” way.

“It sounds like he was quite happy to go to war. It’s just so sad what happened. So sad that he lost his life. What a man he was,” Nevil said.