Thursday, August 24, 2023

Issue:

Mackay and Whitsunday Life

Message In A Bottle

Romance novels, childhood cartoons and British band The Police have led everyone to believe that one day, we’d all find a mysterious bottle washed ashore at the beach containing a grand tale of adventure from the original sender.

It doesn’t happen as often as these sources let us hope, but it did happen to fisherman Darrell Barba two weekends ago.

Mr Barba was traversing the mangroves looking for mud muscles at Midge Point, north of Mackay, when he spotted an old, clear bottle with a hint of colour shining through.

“I thought it was full of money, actually,” Mr Barba said.

“I thought, ‘I’m onto it here’.”

The source of the colour was a sole $10 note and, alongside it, a stamped postcard with a return address and a faded, handwritten note.

Failing to manoeuvre the contents through the bottleneck, Mr Barba broke the bottle.

Upon unravelling the faded note, Mr Barba discovered that the bottle had been afloat for over ten years after being dropped off a cruise ship about halfway between New Zealand and Brisbane.

The postcard revealed it had been “dropped astern off the Sun Princess on Christmas Day 25th December 2011” in the “mid-Tasman sea”, floating thousands of kilometres to wash up at Midge Point.

The postcard also featured instructions, directing the bottle’s discoverer to write down where and when the bottle was found and post the postcard back to the name and address, which read John Reed in northern Sydney.

Mr Barba followed the instructions and made contact with Mr Reed, returning the postcard.

This all came as a shock to Mr Reed as he didn’t drop the bottle off the ship himself.

“I think it’s pretty amazing it’s floated around the Pacific, or maybe the world,” Mr Reed said.

It was his good mate, Tony Potter, a whiskey-loving larrikin, who set the bottle free off the side of the Sun Princess.

Mr Reed said Mr Potter probably thought it was a good idea at the time.

“He’s a bit of a character, Tony,” said Mr Reed.

“A good mate for many years.

“That’s the sort of thing he did.

“I wouldn’t have done it myself but that was his idea of a joke.”

Unfortunately, Mr Potter passed away last year and didn’t live to see the punchline of his long-term joke.

“I’d like to ring him up and tell him the bottle’s been found and I’d love to talk to him,” Mr Reed said.

“But he passed away last year so I’d have to have a very long telephone cord.

“He’d think it was terrific, he’d think it was great that the bottle actually turned up.”

The bottle washed ashore at Midge Point, catching the eye of fisherman Darrell Barba

The bottle contained a postcard, a faded handwritten note and a $10 reward

Mr Barba sent the postcard to the surprise of the recipient, Sydney’s John Reed. Photos supplied: Camp Misguided

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