Overview
- Peter and Felicity Brown discovered the Schweppes bottle on October 9 at Wharton Beach near Esperance during a family beach clean-up.
- Inside were two pencil-written letters dated August 15, 1916 from Australian soldiers Malcolm Neville, 27, and William Harley, 37.
- The men were sailing on HMAT A70 Ballarat, which left Adelaide on August 12 to reinforce the 48th Australian Infantry Battalion on the Western Front.
- Neville asked that his note be delivered to his mother, Robertina, in Wilkawatt, while Harley wrote that the finder could keep his message.
- Relatives were contacted and described powerful emotions; Neville died in action about a year later, and Harley was twice wounded, survived the war, and died in 1934 of cancer his family links to gas exposure.