Former navy seaman’s message in a bottle cast into ocean half a century ago finally finds home in Esperance

A former Royal Australian Navy seaman’s decades-old wish has finally come true, after finding out a message he cast into the ocean more than 50 years ago had been discovered. A message popped inside a tomato sauce bottle and thrown into the Southern Ocean near Antarctica on August 10, 1975, has finally found its home in Esperance Museum. The letter was written by an executive officer’s assistant at the time, Gordon Lowe, who was aboard the guided missile destroyer HMAS Hobart, and inked on a piece of RAN paper. Some of the words read: “If you find this note, please send location of the find, date, if it is not too much trouble, have a nice day.” It detailed the co-ordinates of the find, 80 degrees south and 140 degrees east, and the time the letter was dropped, noted 12.30 Western Australian time. In March 1985, the decade-old letter was found washed ashore along the coast of Wattle Camp, east of Israelite Bay, by a bottle collector. The finder, who was more interested in the plastic bottle, slipped the note in between pages of a book, where it sat for 40 more years. Late last year, the letter resurfaced, when it was discovered by Esperance resident Aaron Quadrio who was donated the book. “He gifted me some antique bottle-collecting books and that’s where I found the letter, in one of these books,” Mr Quadrio said. “I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing. “I just couldn’t believe someone had found a letter and not replied to it in all that time.” Mr Quadrio told his fellow bottle-collecting friend about his discovery, who was not as fazed as he was. “I told him about it, and he’s like ‘Oh yeah, I forgot about that’,” he said. “He said he actually used to have a couple of them, and he doesn’t know where they went.” Eager to share the letter with the community, Mr Quadrio handed his find into the local museum, which managed to track down Mr Lowe, who is now 75 and works as a facilities manager in Sydney. Mr Lowe told the Kalgoorlie Miner he was pleased to discover one of his messages had been found, as he had dropped seven bottles with messages inside them into the ocean when he was in the navy. “I had the opportunity to drop a bottle in different positions around the world, I even dropped the bottle around Hong Kong,” he said. “This was the only bottle, or tomato sauce bottle, that was ever recovered. “I’m quite relieved that it came out somewhere.” His hobby of dropping bottles into the ocean stemmed from boredom during his duties. “You could work 18 hours a day and several of those hours are just waiting around,” he said. “So, you think, maybe I should just write a little note, go outside, walk around, throw it over the side and there’s a couple hours wasted. “You can’t sit around and look like you’re not busy, because you don’t want to be called a malingerer or a time waster.” The fragile letter has since been storied in the museum’s local history collection archives room, with only a digital copy available online for people to see. Museum cultural officer Lynda Horn said the piece of paper was too precious to publicly display. “It was starting to fall apart in our hands almost,” she said. “We were basically looking at the possibility of it deteriorating further if we put it on display. “Anything that comes through the doors of the museum to be included in the local history collection will always be valued and always be looked after. “Our focus is making sure that the information and the stories that we collect are significant to Esperance and the region.” The letter is the second of its kind to be handed in to the Esperance Museum, with another written in 1908 stored away for protection. Catalogued in 1995 after being found washed ashore in a medicine bottle at a beach within Cape Le Grand National Park, the letter was thrown off the ship Grace Darling. Ms Horn said messages in bottles were not as common nowadays, so it was always an exciting moment when they were found. “Putting messages in bottles and popping them over the side (of a ship) was something that I think people just did as a little bit of fun back in the day,” she said. “I don’t think it’s a common thing nowadays. “So, we’re very excited when things like that come through the door.” Mr Lowe said he believed it was because people nowadays were more mindful of what they discarded into the ocean. “Under this electronic age, I think that people are very mindful too that we don’t throw things into the ocean anymore,” he said. “Nowadays this would be called trash and pollution of the high seas.” Mr Lowe served in the RAN from 1968 to 1988 as an able seaman, leading seaman, and petty officer across Sydney, aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne, and HMAS Hobart. He was on board HMAS Melbourne when it collided with the USS Frank E. Evans on June 3, 1969, splitting it in half, resulting in the death of 74 sailors. After his time in the navy, he went on to become an assistant manager at Sydney Defence Housing Authority, taking on honorary roles as a president of the OPS Room Association and a convenor for the Cyclone Tracy Award.