Updated
Paul Gilmore has not taken many cruises during his 63 years, but his current holiday has taken an unexpected detour — into his past, and the media spotlight.
Key points:
- In 1969, a 13-year-old English migrant dropped a letter into the Southern Ocean seeking a penpal
- The letter was found this week by a 9-year-old boy in South Australia
- The author, now a teacher, tracked to a cruise ship in Estonia, came ashore to a surprise
The former 'Ten Pound Pom' was enjoying life on the high seas in the Baltic this week when he started receiving messages from friends and family, out of the blue, about his first ocean voyage 50 years ago.
In November 1969, the then-13-year-old was travelling with his family, who were preparing to make a new life in Australia after leaving England.
As the TSS Fairstar migrant ship approached the Western Australian coast, he set loose a message in a bottle seeking a new penpal, listing his future address on Sunshine Avenue in the Melbourne suburb of Mitcham.
For five decades, Mr Gilmore heard nothing — until Tuesday, when another young boy picked up that bottle, still containing an intact note, on a remote South Australian beach.
"It's all a bit unbelievable, but it's great that it survived. I never imagined it would," Mr Gilmore told the ABC, after disembarking from his current cruise at the Estonian capital Tallinn.
"Strangely enough, I said to my wife just a couple of days ago — we were standing on deck and looking out to sea — '50 years ago, when I was just a young guy, I threw a couple of bottles in the water'.
"Fifty years is a long time to wait for a reply … it's a heck of a coincidence really."
When Mr Gilmore cast his letter overboard, he had no inkling of the sequence of events he would set in motion.
The bottle was uncovered in sand dunes near Talia beach, between Elliston and Venus Bay on South Australia's west coast, by 9-year-old Jyah Elliott during a fishing expedition with his father.
Attempts to respond to Mr Gilmore began immediately, and aptly enough, with Jyah slipping a letter into the post later that day.
The story appeared online and the ABC's search for 'Paul Gilmore' began, but finding the right one was tricky — there are dozens all over the world. Oddly, it wasn't social media but the old-school tech of Melbourne genealogist Sue McBeth that led to the right person.
He had returned to England in 1973. But adult Paul Gilmore was proving elusive — his family urgently tried to call him on Wednesday, but he was on holiday and out of mobile phone range.
"There was no signal on the ship and just as we got off this morning … everything arrived, so I was a bit shocked," Mr Gilmore said last night, Australian time.
"I was worried it was bad news — so it was a relief to find it was something good."
Memories of a milestone voyage
Mr Gilmore joked the 50-year wait for a reply was "worse than the British mail service", and it was not the only message he wrote on that voyage.
Photo:
Jyah Elliott holding the 50-year-old letter he found while fishing. (Supplied: Carla Elliott)
"Every few days I'd write a note and throw it in the sea hoping that I'd hear from someone, but I never did — until today," he said.
"In the Indian Ocean I put a couple in there and one in the [Great] Australian Bight.
"It was a month journey, you see, [so] maybe one every week or something like that.
"I got the bottles from the Italian waiter — he was very good at giving me bottles every now and then. He knew what I wanted them for.
"I'm sure he thought it was a bit of a waste of time, but I could tell him now that it worked after all!
"I think I was hoping it'd be picked up by a girl in a bikini on the beach, but you never know. You've got to try, even when you're 13."
Mr Gilmore's family was from Yorkshire in northern England, and he had never travelled beyond Britain before leaving for Australia.
"I didn't sleep very much because I just wanted to be looking out at the places we visited and the ships we passed," he said, still possessing a soft Yorkshire accent.
"It was a real adventure and a real milestone in our lives. In my life, certainly.
"I loved my time in Australia — because I was there until I was 17, so that was my home really and I just loved the freedom."
After he returned to England in 1973, Mr Gilmore became an English teacher, travelling to Finland and the Middle East before teaching at a school in Yorkshire for 25 years.
His latest cruise has already taken in several destinations — including Denmark, Germany, Estonia — and will push on to Finland, Sweden and Russia.
"I haven't thrown any [new] bottles in the water yet. But I think I better start," he said.
"If it's only every 50 years they pick them up I better get going!"
And he has made a firm promise — Jyah can expect a response.
"I've got a bit of replying to do," he said.
"I won't put the message in a bottle though. I'll use air mail."
Topics: history, emigration, community-and-society, human-interest, offbeat, adelaide-5000, sa, port-lincoln-5606, melbourne-3000, vic, mitcham-3132, fremantle-6160, wa, australia, perth-6000, united-kingdom, estonia
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