Published on Thursday, 5 February 2026 at 8:00:00 AM
Esperance Museum received a remarkable donation recently - a fragile handwritten letter with a story spanning oceans and decades, rediscovered due to a bit of luck.
The letter was written on 10 August 1975 by 25-year-old Leading Seaman Gordon Lowe on board the HMAS Hobart, popped in a sauce bottle and dropped into the ocean.
Fast forward to 1985, when the bottle and letter was found at Wattle Camp, east of Israelite Bay, by a bottle collector. Only interested in the bottle, he gently removed the note and slipped it between the pages of a book, where it stayed hidden for the next 40 years.
That book eventually changed hands, and the new owner, Aaron, recognised the significance of the letter. He took it to the Esperance Museum, where staff carefully assessed its condition and started piecing together its history.
Thanks to their dedication the Museum team were able to locate Gordon, who shared that he had tossed the message overboard very close to the South Pole in East Antarctica, inspired by a story his mother had told him as a child about finding her own message in a bottle. “(I was) remembering a tale our mother told me of her finding a bottle with a message on the beach when she was a little girl. Given the opportunity and finding an empty sauce bottle onboard HMAS Hobart, I placed a note inside the sauce bottle, and dropped it over the side (in those early days an exciting thing to do) – now this would be called trash and pollution of the high seas - plus I was hoping once day it would be found.”
The letter is too fragile to be put on display, but scanned copies of the note and photos of Gordon have been shared on the Museum Facebook page so the community can enjoy this special story.
What began as a young sailor’s hopeful gesture has now become a fascinating piece of local history, preserved thanks to the care and curiosity of our Museum staff. Their commitment ensures stories like this are shared for generations to come.
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