An Australian child found a letter inside a bottle, asking a friend for correspondence on a remote beach in South Australia, about 50 years after being thrown into the Indian Ocean.
The boy, Jiah Elliott, found the bottle among sand dunes on the beach of Talia on the island of Air in South Australia, while his father Paul was hunting. The father broke the bottle and found the message inside.
The author of the letter is a man named Paul Gilmore, dated November 17, 1969, and reveals that Gilmore was then 13 years old, from England and was on the way to Melbourne, apparently writing the letter on board the Vistar during her trip to Australia. Gilmore asked for a response from anyone who found the letter.
The father responded to the letter after the Australian Broadcasting Corporation helped track down the owner and found that he had returned to the UK. The radio said that the communication between the two men this time was through more sophisticated means.