Australian boy finds 50-year-old message in a bottle, much to the author's surprise

While sailing from England to Australia, 13-year-old Paul Gilmore jotted down a quick note, placed the piece of paper inside a bottle, and threw his message out to sea, hoping someone would read his missive and reply back.

That was in 1969, and it only took 50 years for a potential pen pal to discover the bottle. Last week, 9-year-old Jyah Elliott found the bottle while fishing at Talia Beach in southern Australia. It's likely the bottle was buried in the sand for a long time, and only recently a storm brought it back up. Elliott wrote a letter to Gilmore, sending it to the address listed on the paper, having no way of knowing if Gilmore still lived there.

Australia's ABC News decided to help Elliott, and tracked down a few of Gilmore's relatives in England. His younger sister, Annie Crossland, shared that her brother was on a cruise in the Baltic Sea and would be "chuffed to bits" upon hearing the news that his message had been found. He's since spoken to 7 News, and said he was just telling his wife about the message in a bottle, and wondered what happened to it. "It is amazing it has turned up," he said. "It was a real surprise 50 years on."

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