A message in a bottle, tossed into the sea somewhere between New Zealand and Fiji more than a year and a half ago, has been discovered by a Kempsey boy.
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Tristan Scilinato was on a family trip to Hungry Head when he discovered the bottle on the beach above the high tide mark.
“He was just poking through some of the stuff that had washed up on the beach,” Tristan’s mother Ash explained.
“I just thought it was from the local camp ground,” Tristan said of the bottle.
Upon closer inspection, he discovered a rolled note inside.
“He went bright red with excitement,” Ash said.
They cracked the cork at home and eagerly unraveled the note.
“We never expected it to be what it was,” Ash said.
Inside was a message from Sadie Parson, an American student at Ohio Wesleyan University, who was on-board a research vessel investigating climate change in the South Pacific at the time of writing.
The letter was dated October 31, 2015, with Sadie encouraging the finder to email her.
Tristan did that, attaching photos of himself with the bottle and telling Sadie where it had been found.
"She was totally over the moon,” Ash said.
“She thought it was so exciting, she never expected anyone to find it.”
Tristan, who is in year four at Kempsey West Public School, had a theory that Cyclone Betty may have knocked the bottle onto Australia’s east coast, something Sadie agreed was feasible.
His discovery triggered an exciting few days for the nine-year-old.
He was interviewed on ABC radio earlier this week and admitted he was “really nervous” before the interview.
Before that, he took the bottle into show and tell for his class.
“They all thought it was pretty cool,” he said.
Although the year and a half wait before the bottle was discovered is a lengthy period of time, other drifting bottles have remained undiscovered for even longer.
The ABC reported in 2014 that a message in a bottle, believed to be the oldest ever, had been found by a fisherman in the Baltic Sea.
It was believed that message was 101 years old, and had been tossed in the sea in Germany in 1912 before being discovered by the fisherman in 2013.
In 2012 a 97-year-old bottle was discovered by Scottish skipper Andrew Leaper near the Shetland Isles.
It had been tossed overboard by Captain C. Hunter Brown near the Shetland Isles in 1914.
