IT WAS like finding a needle in a haystack when 14-year-old Lili Hanley defied the odds and found a message in a bottle at a local beach.
The San Remo resident had been walking with her father Phil along San Remo beach on November 29 during one of the State’s big storms when she saw something in the seaweed.
“When I told Dad he didn’t believe me,” she said.
Mr Hanley said he initially thought the green bottle was junk before Lili convinced him there was a message inside.
Lili said she saw some writing inside on what turned out to be an American dollar note.
After taking the bottle home Mr Hanley said the family uncorked it to find the bottle had been floating across the Indian Ocean for a couple of years.
Inside the bag were two American one dollar notes and a business card of Brian and Joan Stewart dated back to March 22, 2010.
On the back of the business card was a handwritten message: “Please contact when found”.
The Hanley family obliged via email and learnt the Stewarts, who are Canadian natives, had dropped the bottle from Cape Horn in Chile at the very base of South America while on a cruise.
The bottle had travelled more than 12,000 kilometres before it reached Lili at San Remo beach.
“I was so excited to find it,” she said.
“We contacted them that night.”
Speaking with a Canadian television station after the find, Mrs Stewart said the couple had carefully dropped the bottle in the water from their balcony on the boat and were surprised where it had ended up.
