Reported in The Canberra Times 39 years ago, a group of Canberra primary school students found a new pen-friend, through a 27-year-old "message in a bottle", which they found floating in Botany Bay.
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The students from Curtin South Primary School found the bottle near Kurnell while on an excursion to Sydney.
The crumpled message inside the bottle was dated September 4, 1954.
It asked for the finder to become a pen-friend and write to the 10-year-old author, Jan D. Outten.
The students wrote to every Outten is the Sydney telephone directory, and their efforts were rewarded several weeks later.
Mrs Jan McDermott (nee Outten), told the students she had written the message when about their age but had forgotten about it.
Mrs McDermott continued to write regularly to her new pen-friends.
Teacher, Mr Hutchinson, said the experience had uncovered some remarkable coincidences.
"The excursion to Sydney is an exchange with Connell's Point Primary in Sydney, and it turns out that Mrs McDermott attended that same school as a child," he said.
"And the mother of one of our students used to work with Mrs McDermott in Canberra in 1962".
