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Tom and Rocky Find Message in a Bottle
A red helicopter docks on top of damp, fine sand in the distance. Waves softly crash against the shore as a dog in a red and black vest scours sand dunes looking for fox dens. Today, it is his handler that makes the big find.
It is warm and sunny at Shoalwater Bay and Senior Project Officer Tom Garrett sets out with Rocky the conservation detector dog early in the morning to complete fox detection works along the beach.
Shoalwater Bay is a military training area off the coast of Rockhampton in Central Queensland. The base was established in 1965, and has been restricted to public access since then. The beach doesn’t see many visitors at all.
The area is known to attract debris; the result of tidal movements that suck all sorts of things onto the beach. Light bulbs, gas bottles, eskies, soccer balls and other miscellaneous items of rubbish discarded by vessels or caught up the tides.
Tom made his way along the waterline, peppered here and there with ocean debris. His eye caught something unusual and out of place glistening in the sun. As he moved closer, he noticed that it was an opaque glass bottle - and there was something inside it.
This was a rare find for Rocky and Tom. They’d worked beaches for years and heard stories of people finding a message in a bottle, but had never experienced it before, nor knew of someone who had.
Tom carefully unscrewed the bottle and removed the paper inside. On an A4 blue lined note, letters in black sharpie jumped from the page...
We are a group of sailors on board a 40 metre sailboat! We left Lyttelton, New Zealand on 31 March 2018 and are ten days into our six week journey to Tahiti. We are expecting some heavy weather from a yet to be named storm so we’ve spent the day securing the boat, tying things down, padding loud pots and pans, getting the sails ready. We have 21 oceanography college students and 13 professional crew onboard. If you are reading this, I would love to hear from you. [CONTACT EMAIL]
Tom pocketed the bottle and note and he and Rocky continued on their task of sweeping the bay for foxes.
Back at the office, Tom retraced his steps and shared his curious find with new staff member Alyssa Glover in the Communications team of SQ Landscapes. Alyssa set out to find the author of the letter - casting off an email to the address detailed on the note...and waiting like all good anglers wait for their catch.
Three days later, Alyssa received a reply to her email.
Lauren Heinen was a marine biology graduate when she boarded the Robert C. Seamans ship as a cook in 2018. Lauren and her 34 crew-mates were confined to a 40 metre space for 40 days studying plankton levels at different sea temperatures. The days were often long. Lauren said the journey from Lyttleton to Tahiti is the longest you can take without seeing land.
Inspired by stories from a previous ship captain and as a means of entertaining herself and communicating with the outside world, Lauren started writing letters during the long evenings. She would fold them up and seal them inside a bottle before throwing them into the sea next afternoon - and watching as the bottle drifted off beyond the horizon.
“I guess I wanted to see if I could have some kind of connection beyond my 34 crew-mates. A really distant connection; and having a message I’m sending out to the world feels like a broader connection,
“I thought, wouldn't it be a cool thing - what might happen,” Lauren said.
The bottle Tom found at Shoalwater Bay with Rocky was some 3,862 kms from where it was cast into the ocean 1,111 days earlier. The bottle’s journey was just short of the total 40 day journey the author Lauren had taken to Tahiti from New Zealand.
“I have thrown about 25 bottles over my eight years at sea and only ever heard responses from four of those messages. It was a shock, and very exciting when you got in contact. So far this is the longest time period between the bottle being thrown and being found,” Lauren said
“The first bottle was found in New Zealand a week or two later. All the others have been found a couple of weeks or months after throwing them into the ocean. It makes me wonder how long it was on the beach before someone found it,” Lauren said.
Lauren also encouraged other students aboard the Robert C. Seamans to join her in sending letters.
“It’s really exciting to hear from students when their bottles get picked up. It's kind of a fun community activity- writing messages and throwing them overboard.” Lauren said.
Now living in Wisconsin USA, Lauren reflected on her time aboard the Robert C. Seamans with great fondness - eager to get back out to sea once Covid restrictions ease.
“I feel like it's magic on both ends - the writing of it and preparing of it and getting together with other students and shipmates to throw it overboard - that's exciting, and then hearing from people who find it years later, that is really exciting,” Lauren said.
Without saying it in words, Tom conveyed the magic of his find at Shoalwater Bay. Although separated by distance, Tom’s remarkable find connects him with Lauren, the sailor who’s words would travel 3,862 kms in an opaque glass bottle, to deliver a message to a man and his conservation detector dog, three years in the future.
Tom now has a forever story to tell about his time at Shoalwater Bay, and Lauren found what she was always seeking for… a really distant connection.
Lauren Heinen (pictured) is the author of the note.
Oceanography student aboard the Robert C. Seamans, Haley Rogers (pictured), throws a bottle out to sea.
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