A message in a bottle cast into the ocean during World War I has washed ashore in Esperance , shedding light on the lives of two Australian soldiers.

During the Brown family’s regular clean-ups at Wharton Beach, they noticed a bottle glinting in the sand with several soaked letters inside it and decided to take it home to open it.

After popping open the cork and letting the letters dry out, Deb Brown tweezed out several notes written by Malcolm Alexander Neville and William Kirk Harley on August 15, 1916, three days after boarding the troop ship HMAT A70 Ballarat to France.

Ms Brown found profiles of the men online via the Australian War Memorial, which matched the information written on the letters, including Mr Neville’s hometown of Wilkawatt, east of Adelaide.

Mr Neville, who was

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