76 YEAR OLD MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE

76 YEAR OLD MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE

It's taken over three quarters of a century but a message in a bottle has finally arrived at its 'destination'. The message was found on New Zealand's Ninety mile Beach by Geoff Flood last November. It said, ‘At sea. Would the finder of this bottle kindly forward this note, where found, date, to undermentioned address.’. The note was dated March 17 and is believed it was set afloat in 1936 by Herbert Ernest Hillbrick, who wrote down his name & address.

Mr Flood said, ‘As I picked it up and started looking, I could see it was an old envelope with P&O on it and I thought this might be something special... There was a bit of mad panic to carefully extract it... I carefully cut a couple of bits of wire and quietly wound it up with the bits of wire so we didn’t damage it.. Who knows where it’s been. How many times around the world, you just wouldn’t know, would you?’

Mr Flood discovered the late author's grandson, Peter Hillbrick, was living in Australia. He assumes his grandfather was enjoying a P&O cruise when he dropped the bottle into the sea.

Mr Hillbrick said, ‘For this one to be floating around in the ocean for 76 years and just all of a sudden pop up in New Zealand... Where has it been? What story is it going to tell?’

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