• Messages written by Australian soldiers a few days before their journey to the battlefields of France during World War I were found inside a bottle on Wharton Beach more than 100 years later
• A relative of one of the soldiers confirmed that the discovery brought the family together and stirred feelings of pride and sorrow over his lost life

A family in Australia discovered a bottle containing letters written by soldiers just days before heading to the front lines in France during World War I, more than a century after they were sent

Deb Brown said her husband, Peter, and daughter, Felicity, found the bottle just above the waterline at Wharton Beach near Esperance in Western Australia during one of their regular quad bike trips to clean up the beach

Inside the bottle was a pencil-written letter by Privates Malcolm Neville, 27, and William Harley, 37, dated August 15, 1916

Their military ship had departed from the South Australian capital, Adelaide, on August 12, 1916, bound for Europe to reinforce the 48th Australian Infantry Battalion on the Western Front

Neville was killed in action a year later, while Harley was wounded twice but survived the war, eventually dying in Adelaide in 1934 from cancer, which the family says was caused by exposure to chemical gases in the trenches

Neville asked the Brown family to deliver his letter to his mother, Robertina Neville, in Wilkawatt, now a mostly abandoned town, while Harley allowed the finder to keep his note

Harley wrote: May the finder be as well as we are at present

Neville wrote to his mother: I am having a really good time, the food is very good so far, except for one meal we buried at sea

Deb Brown believes the bottle did not travel far, likely spending more than a century buried in the sand dunes before being uncovered by recent erosion caused by large waves

Although the paper was wet, the writing remained legible, allowing the soldiers’ relatives to be notified of the discovery

Harley’s granddaughter, Ann Turner, expressed her astonishment, saying: We just can’t believe it. It really feels like our grandfather reached out to us from the grave

Meanwhile, Neville’s great-nephew, Herbie Neville, confirmed that the discovery brought the family together, adding: It seems he was happy to go to war, but it is so sad that he lost his life. What a great man he was