WWI soldiers’ letters found in a bottle on Australian beach: What’s written inside

A family’s regular beach clean-up in Western Australia led to a discovery that reached across more than a century. On 9 October, the Brown family found a glass bottle washed up on Wharton Beach near Esperance, containing handwritten letters from two Australian soldiers who were en route to the Western Front during the First World War. The letters, dated 15 August 1916, were written by Privates Malcolm Neville and William Harley aboard the troopship HMAT A70 Ballarat. What began as a simple day of picking up rubbish turned into a moving encounter with the voices of men heading to war. The bottle, an old Schweppes-branded glass bottle, was spotted just above the waterline by Peter Brown and his daughter Felicity while riding quad bikes along the beach. Thinking it was litter, they pick