Bottled messages.

[MicCanberra]

Interesting story - https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-18/paul-gilmore-found-50-years-after-message-thrown-overboard/11319962

[GUT2407]

Mrs Gut has had a pen friend for over 50 years as a result of a letter in a bottle, (now it’s mainly online).

[GUT2407]

It was a similar story, a school friend coming to Aus from England, each kid in the class wrote notes in bottles for the one coming out to toss overboard. Funnily enough also the Fairstar.

[LincolnLegend]

Talia Beach is about 150ks west of us, heading towards the WA boarder. it's pretty cool that it was still intact after all this time.

[Aus Traveller]

On a 'Fairstar' cruise in the mid 1980s, our kids wrote messages and threw them overboard in bottles on the last night before arriving in Sydney. This was an activity organised by the Kids' Club.

 

Around 15 years later we received a phone call from someone who found one of these bottles in Princess Charlotte Bay in Far North Queensland. The caller asked "Does XXX live there?" He was very surprised when we said that he did, but he was out at the time. Our son had put his name and address, but back-dated it many years and said he was being held captive on an island. It would have been obvious to the finder who was a teacher, that the writing belonged to a child. Our son was around ten at the time. We were delighted that the bottle had been found and that the finder had telephoned us.

[MicCanberra]

6 hours ago, GUT2407 said:

Mrs Gut has had a pen friend for over 50 years as a result of a letter in a bottle, (now it’s mainly online).

How do you get bottles through the cables?

[MicCanberra]

3 hours ago, Aus Traveller said:

On a 'Fairstar' cruise in the mid 1980s, our kids wrote messages and threw them overboard in bottles on the last night before arriving in Sydney. This was an activity organised by the Kids' Club.

 

Around 15 years later we received a phone call from someone who found one of these bottles in Princess Charlotte Bay in Far North Queensland. The caller asked "Does XXX live there?" He was very surprised when we said that he did, but he was out at the time. Our son had put his name and address, but back-dated it many years and said he was being held captive on an island. It would have been obvious to the finder who was a teacher, that the writing belonged to a child. Our son was around ten at the time. We were delighted that the bottle had been found and that the finder had telephoned us.

Great result.

Of course, we cannot do it anything like this any more as you are not allowed to throw anything off a ship.

[The_Big_M]

40 minutes ago, MicCanberra said:

Great result.

Of course, we cannot do it anything like this any more as you are not allowed to throw anything off a ship.

 

With so much litter on the oceans and beaches, it's likely there are other discarded bottles where the messages have been missed/lost and the bottles just lie around making a mess.

[MicCanberra]

Exactly, it shocked me how much litter was washed up on the shores in Sri Lanka and the Maldives

[lyndarra]

Back in the early 70s I was a nasho stationed in Supadio, Indonesia (West Kalimantan/Borneo). There were about forty of us and we were there for four months. All our refuse was taken to a nearby river and (shock horror) tossed in. But before it got into the water local kids went through it and scavenged a most of it including food waste which most likely ended up feeding their goats and chickens. It was a rural area. Not much plastic in use then.

[ilikeanswers]

On 7/19/2019 at 7:28 AM, MicCanberra said:

Exactly, it shocked me how much litter was washed up on the shores in Sri Lanka and the Maldives

 

I visited the inland sea in Qatar recently and I was shocked at all the garbage strewn through the sand dunes. Even though we hadn't said anything our guide said "I know what your thinking unfortunately the people here don't understand about garbage" 😔

 

Though I have wondered if people who volunteer to clean up those garbage patches ever find those messages in the bottles people chucked all those years ago? It would be interesting to know how many ended up at those garbage patches. 

Edited July 22, 2019 by ilikeanswers

[MicCanberra]

If I am busy picking up rubbish, I am not inspecting the contents of bottles, it goes straight into the garbage bag.

[Aus Traveller]

49 minutes ago, ilikeanswers said:

Though I have wondered if people who volunteer to clean up those garbage patches ever find those messages in the bottles people chucked all those years ago? It would be interesting to know how many ended up at those garbage patches. 

When my kids threw 'messages in a bottle' overboard from the Fairstar, they had to find a wine or spirits bottle from one of the bars. Plastic bottles weren't so prevalent then. I think most of these bottles would have gone to the bottle of the ocean fairly quickly.

 

It's good that now cruise ships are very strict on nothing being thrown overboard.