Lancelin WA: Little boy finds a message in a bottle that was thrown out to sea nearly 40 YEARS ago and tracks down the teenage girls who wrote it – but there’s a sad twist

A message in a bottle thrown into the sea nearly 40 years ago that brought joy to the little boy who found it now has a tinge of sadness after its writers were tracked down.

Meg Prideaux took her four-year-old son Leo to the beach in their hometown of Lancelin, Western Australia, to look for treasure when they found a bottle with a rolled-up note buried in the sand.

“We took it home and waited until my daughter and husband came home, but we couldn’t get it open,” Ms. Prideaux said. Seven news.

The message was difficult to get out of the bottle due to corrosion on the wax seal and the growth of barnacles.

Mrs. Prideaux’s husband managed to break the seal with a knife, carefully removed the note and unrolled it.

It was a little damp, but clearly legible and dated 1985 – 39 years ago.

The letter was written by Joanne Hunter and Louise Pocock, who were both 15 years old at the time.

The note, by the way, had not traveled a great distance: it had been thrown into the sea from the same beach where it was found almost forty years later.

The teenagers were on holiday at the Hunter family’s beach house in Lancelin, about two hours’ drive north of Perth, when they decided to write a message in a bottle.

The letter asked whoever found the letter to send a letter to the girls in Perth.

The girls had hoped it would end thousands of miles away in a faraway exotic land

The note was only found at Lancelin Beach, where it lay buried for nearly 40 years.

Thanks to Seven News, the family were put in touch with Joanne Evans (née Hunter), aged 54.

“I thought, ‘Oh my God. Is that really true?’ I haven’t thought about that in forever,” Ms. Evans said.

“We wrote it at night and sealed it with wax. Then we swam with it in the water. First we threw it off the beach and it kept washing back. The next morning we swam with it in the water again.”

She said her friend Louise was ‘always full of enthusiasm and had such a great imagination that it was her idea to do it’.

Tragically, Mrs Pocock died of leukaemia six years ago.

But her sister Sarah said she would have been very happy if the message had been found.

“Oh, she would be so happy, she really would be – especially that a little boy found it too after 39 years of just sitting in the sand,” Sarah said.

The two letter writers were 15 years old at the time. The photo shows Joanne Evans (née Hunter)

The message (in the photo) was a bit wet but clearly legible and dated 1985 – 39 years ago

Tragically, Mrs Pocock (pictured) died from leukaemia six years ago, but her sister, Sarah Martin, said she would have been delighted if the message had been found

“She was a wonderful, happy, carefree person and she had a very good life. She was very artistic and creative. She met a wonderful man, married him and had a beautiful little girl.

‘As time goes by, you feel like they’re slipping further and further away from you. And then this message comes out of nowhere, something really beautiful.’

The Prideaux family plans to visit Mrs. Evans and give her the bottle and the valuable note.