Father and Son Find 50-Year-Old Message in a Bottle in Australia

This week, ABC reported that it had found Gilmore’s sister, Annie Crossland, who revealed that currently (and fittingly) her brother is on a cruise in the Baltic Sea. “It’s amazing, absolutely incredible,” she said. “He’ll be chuffed to bits. The last time he was on a ship was probably going to Australia. Cruises aren’t his thing.”

Crossland had also been on the ship in 1969, and recalled seeing her brother writing the message that he would later put in the found bottle.

As reported by The Guardian, according to oceanographer David Griffin, the bottle had probably been buried on a beach for years, and then refloated by a storm. “If it had been dropped in anywhere in the ocean somewhere south of Australia,” he said, “then there’s no way it’s going to stay actually at sea moving around for more than a year or two.”

The improbability of discovering this bottle is pretty staggering, and Gilmore has quite a surprise in store when he returns from his cruise.