Overview
- Debra Brown and her family discovered a Schweppes glass bottle during an Oct. 9 clean-up at Wharton Beach near Esperance, with pencilled letters inside.
- The notes, dated Aug. 15, 1916, were written by Privates Malcolm Alexander Neville and William Kirk Harley a few days after boarding HMAT A70 Ballarat, which left Adelaide on Aug. 12.
- Australian War Memorial records confirm Neville was killed in action in April 1917, while Harley was wounded twice, survived the war, and died in 1934, which his family attributes to gas exposure.
- A University of Western Australia oceanographer said currents could have carried the bottle to Wharton in weeks, and its pristine condition supports that it likely spent decades buried in dunes before recent coastal erosion revealed it.
- Brown is mailing the soldiers’ letters to Neville’s great-nephew and Harley’s granddaughter, while retaining the bottle and a note addressed to the finder, as the families weigh possible museum donation.