10th July 2018
On a recent beach walk on luxury Whitsundays island Long Island, Charlton Craggs (staff member at a nearby resort) stumbled upon a message in a bottled washed ashore.
The bottle, which had been at sea for more than two years, had travelled over six thousand kilometres before arriving at the tropical North Queensland island.
The enclosed message read as follows:
“Hello,
I am Tom Love on cruise ship Oceania ‘Marina’ Jan 25/2016 from Valparaiso to Papeete.
Contact: Tom Love
307 Ferris Way N.W
Edmonton, Alberta
Canada T6R2CA
Email: [email protected]
Please contact me. I enclose $1 USD for expenses.
Cheers, Tom”
“I was so excited and couldn’t wait to contact the author to tell him I’d found his message – it was like something out of a movie,” Mr Craggs recalled.
Mr Love, sender of the message, expressed his delight in learning of the journey the bottle had undertaken since he tossed it overboard on the final evening of a 2016 cruise from Chile to French Polynesia.
“I got straight online, after hearing the news, and found that the message had travelled over 6,200 kilometres to your beach, in the Whitsundays,” he said.
“It must have travelled past islands like Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, and so many inhabited and uninhabited landfalls.”
Dubbed a ‘love’ letter in light of the senders surname, the Tourism Whitsundays’ General Manager Tash Wheeler has indicated that the ‘love’ story has great tourism potential for the region.
“This is a great little story, and one which will certainly bring about some heightened interest in our beautiful region, particularly Long Island,” Ms Wheeler said.
“It has already gained the interest of a news channel in Canada and we expect to see more media coverage as word of the discovery spreads further.”
The message and bottle are expected to finish their long journey on display behind the resort’s bar.
Tourism Whitsundays have invited Mr Love and his wife to visit the region on their next holiday.
