‘He was so excited': painter discovers 122-year-old message in a bottle inside lighthouse walls
Specialist painter Brian Burford was performing routine maintenance on the seaside structure when the discovery took place, according to Annita Waghorn, historic heritage manager for the Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service.
'While he was working inside the lantern room – which is the room at the top of the lighthouse where the lens and lightening mechanism is – dealing with some rust and corrosion, he popped through into the wall cavity,' Waghorn said.
It was then that something in the cavity caught Burford's eye, 'glinting' in the light.
'He was so excited that he gave me a call and said that he found a message in a bottle,' Waghorn said.
It turned out that the letter was not just a simple note, but an envelope containing two hand-written pages detailing upgrades made to the lighthouse in 1903.
A staircase, floor, lantern room and lens were added to the heritage-listed lighthouse nearly 70 years after the original structure was built in 1838.
The note was signed by lighthouse inspector for the Hobart Marine Board, JR Meech, who supervised the construction and maintenance of several well-known lighthouses around Tasmania including Cape Sorell, Maatsuyker Island, Tasman Island, Table Cape, and Mersey Bluff.
'It was incredibly exciting … it was such a mystery when it first came to what the message was about and how it had come to be in this inaccessible location within the tower,' Waghorn said.
But it wasn't an easy feat. Initially reluctant to open the bottle, Waghorn enlisted help from conservators at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery who carefully extracted the delicate aged paper.
'The bottle was sealed with a cork coated in bitumen, which made removal challenging,' Cobus van Breda, the museum's senior paper conservator, told the ABC.
'We had to remove the bitumen from the top of the cork, then carefully work our way around the cork to detach it from the glass as the cork had been dipped in bitumen.'
'The next challenge was to get the message out of the bottle. It had been folded in a way that made it quite challenging to get it through the narrow neck of the bottle without damaging it.'
It took several days to decipher Meech's message, the team said.
Museum staff plan to put the letter on display for public viewing.
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The Guardian
3 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘Why didn't you tell me?': the Australian push to have all adopted people told their full history and identity
Merrilees Ritchie describes it as an 'out of body experience'. It felt as if she was watching from above her kitchen table in Albany, Western Australia, as her brother explained to her that the pair of them had been adopted as babies, nearly 40 years before. Over a cup of tea he revealed they also had different biological mothers. They were not biologically related. 'I was absolutely shell-shocked,' Ritchie recalls. 'I'd basically lived half my life by then, believing I was part of this family I'd grown up with.' By the time her brother made the revelation, 32 years ago, their adoptive mother had been dead for 10 years. Ritchie had kept a photograph of her up on the kitchenette. 'I looked at the photo and just thought: 'You liar, you liar, why didn't you tell me?'' After her brother's disclosure, she has spent years jumping through hoops trying get hold of crucial documents that would help her claim back her identity. She even had to pay for her real birth certificate, since adoptees were given fabricated versions with their adoptive parents' names on them. Ritchie is a late discovery adoptee, a term given to people who find out as adults that they are not who they thought they were. She is one of a number of people born during the secretive forced adoption era from the 1940s to the early 1980s, when thousands of babies were removed from their single mothers and given to married couples. For many late discovery adoptees, the truth is only discovered after an adoptive parent dies or by accident. Now Ritchie is part of the Great Southern Adoptee Support Group, calling for all adoptees to be notified of their adopted status. 'It's like a bomb going off,' says Caroline de la Harpe, a senior counsellor with the WA-based Adoption Research and Counselling Service. Suddenly, she says, grown adults have to navigate two different worlds, that of their adoptive family and their newly discovered biological kin. 'That kind of turns their world upside down in terms of who they think they are.' The plight of late discovery adoptees was highlighted at a WA parliamentary inquiry into the forced adoption polices of last century, with its report released in August last year. Among its 39 recommendations, Broken Bonds, Fractured Lives recommended the WA government notifies all adult adopted persons not already aware of their adopted status. A system of automatic notification would be the first of its kind in Australia. Although no clear pathway for notification was outlined in the report, advocates say mandatory notification would tackle the ongoing harm to people who may find out the truth without warning or support, or are denied the truth about their origins for their whole lives. The recommendation was rejected by the WA government two months later due to its potential to 'cause significant psychological harm and distress.' Bernadette Richards, associate professor of ethics and professionalism at Queensland University medical school, says while the argument about potentially traumatising unsuspecting people by telling them they are adopted is persuasive, doing nothing breaches adopted people's fundamental human rights. Not least their right to know their family medical history. 'There is also that risk there of benevolent paternalism,' she says. 'Trying not to harm someone but taking away a choice. In reality, that's what has happened to these people, isn't it? They've lost the right to know something important.' However, Richards says comprehensive supports would need to be carefully planned to address the 'real risk of harm' in implementing a mass notification system. 'The age of these people must be respected, as must the fact that this is really something that goes to the core of individual identity and understanding of who they are and how they define that,' she says. Prof Daryl Higgins, a psychologist who has researched the impact of forced adoption, questions whether there is research to support the case for mass notification. Higgins, the director of the Institute of Child Protection Studies at the Australian Catholic University, says while adoptees have a right to know information about themselves, if they choose to, he is not convinced that all adoptees would welcome, or benefit from, being told by government authorities. Instead, he calls for a community awareness campaign – ideally a national initiative – to encourage people who have doubts about their birth status to access services that can help them find out in a supported way. Dr Ebony White from St Bonaventure University in New York was a co-author of one of the few studies in existence about late discovery adoptees. White backs the idea of proactively notifying adults, but supports a national awareness campaign to prepare people beforehand. She too underscores the importance of providing counselling and support to those who suspect they may have been adopted and coaching for adoptive families on how to broach the truth with their adult children. She also warns that for many reasons some biological parents do not wish to be found, and mandatory notification could lead to distress for all parties. That's an issue also raised by Caroline de la Harpe of the WA government-funded Adoption Research and Counselling Service, who stresses the importance of considering other family members, including half-siblings. 'Absolutely, [the adoptees] have the right to know information about themselves,' she says. 'But you can't just think about notifying that person because there's a whole raft of people who are going to be affected by that notification.' The senior counsellor and psychotherapist says, for example, biological families would also have to receive support in advance of possible reunification. 'Are you wanting a relationship with them? Are you willing to at least meet them and get to know them? So at least when [adoptees] are notified, you've got some information around their birth family and what the possibilities are for getting to know them.' So-called 'contact vetoes', which are lodged by different parties to adoption who do not wish to be contacted by each other, would also have to be carefully considered, she adds, with separate management plans put in place to handle those cases. About 700 contact vetoes remained in place in WA at the time of the inquiry. For Ritchie, now 71, despite the fact that her reunion with her biological mother was imperfect, she is glad she knows the truth about herself. 'I'm only sorry I wasn't told earlier,' she says. Although she managed to find her biological mother, Nola, she says too much time had been lost. Reconnecting with her biological mother at a younger age, she believes, could have brought them closer. 'I don't think she could actually deal with the fact that I was back in her life,' she says. 'I feel quite cheated. If we'd been given more time, I think she would have softened.' They never hugged or had any physical contact, until six hours before her mother died when Ritchie was able to visit her in hospital in Perth. 'I just put my hand on top of her hand,' remembers Ritchie. 'I don't even know if she knew I was there, but I knew I was there.' To contact the Forced Adoption Support Service in your state or territory, ring 1800 210 313. To contact the Adoption Research and Counselling Service, ring (08) 9370 4914
BBC News
5 hours ago
- BBC News
How the mystery of Winston Churchill's dead platypus was finally solved
In 1943, a camouflaged ship set off from Australia to England carrying top secret cargo - a single young after his would-be owner, UK prime minister Winston Churchill, the rare monotreme was an unprecedented gift from a country desperately trying to curry favour as World War Two expanded into the Pacific and arrived on its days out from Winston's arrival, as war raged in the seas around him, the puggle was found dead in the water of his specially made "platypusary".Fearing a potential diplomatic incident, Winston's death – along with his very existence – was swept under the was preserved, stuffed and quietly shelved inside his name-sake's office, with rumours that he died of Nazi-submarine-induced shell-shock gently whispered into the mystery of who, or what, really killed him has eluded the world since - until now. Two Winstons and a war The world has always been fascinated by the platypus. An egg-laying mammal with the face and feet of a duck, an otter-shaped body and a beaver-inspired tail, many thought the creature was an elaborate hoax; a taxidermy Churchill, an avid collector of rare and exotic animals, the platypus's intrigue only made him more desperate to have one – or six – for his in 1943 he said as much to the Australian foreign minister, H.V. 'Doc' the eyes of Evatt, the fact that his country had banned the export of the creatures - or that they were notoriously difficult to transport and none had ever survived a journey that long - were merely challenges to had increasingly felt abandoned by the motherland as the Japanese drew closer and closer – and if a posse of platypuses would help Churchill respond more favourably to Canberra's requests for support, then so be David Fleay – who was asked to help with the mission – was less amenable."Imagine any man carrying the responsibilities Churchill did, with humanity on the rack in Europe and Asia, finding time to even think about, let alone want, half-a-dozen duckbilled platypuses," he wrote in his 1980 book Paradoxical Platypus. On Mr Fleay's account, he managed to talk the politicians down from six platypuses to one, and young Winston was captured from a river near Melbourne shortly elaborate platypusary – complete with hay-lined burrows and fresh Australian creek water – was constructed for him; a menu of 50,000 worms – and duck egg custard as a treat – was prepared; and an attendant was hired to wait on his every need throughout the 45-day the Pacific, through Panama Canal and into the Atlantic Ocean Winston went - before tragedy a letter to Evatt, Churchill said he was "grieved" to report that the platypus "kindly" sent to him had died in the final stretch of the journey."Its loss is a great disappointment to me," he mission's failure was kept secret for years, to avoid any public outcry. But eventually, reports about Winston's demise would begin popping up in newspapers. The ship had encountered a German U-boat, they claimed, and the platypus had been shaken to death amid a barrage of blasts. "A small animal equipped with a nerve-packed, super sensitive bill, able to detect even the delicate movements of a mosquito wriggler on stream bottoms in the dark of night, cannot hope to cope with man-made enormities such as violent explosions," Mr Fleay wrote, decades later."It was so obvious that, but for the misfortunes of war, a fine, thriving, healthy little platypus would have created history in being number one of its kind to take up residence in England." Mystery unravelled "It is a tempting story, isn't it?" PhD student Harrison Croft tells the it's one that has long raised so last year, Mr Croft embarked on his own journey: a search for archives in both Canberra and London, the Monash University student found a bunch of records from the ship's crew, including an interview with the platypus attendant charged with keeping Winston alive."They did a sort of post-mortem, and he was very particular. He was very certain that there was no explosion, that it was all very calm and quiet on board," Mr Croft says. A state away, another team in Sydney was looking into Winston's life too. David Fleay's personal collection had been donated to the Australian Museum, and staff all over the building were desperate to know if it held answers."You'd ride in the lifts and some doctor from mammalogy… [would ask] 'what archival evidence is there that Winston died from depth charge detonations?'" the museum's archive manager Robert Dooley tells the BBC."This is something that had intrigued people for a long time."With the help of a team of interns from the University of Sydney, they set about digitising all of Fleay's records in a bid to find out. Even as far back as the 1940s, people knew that platypuses were voracious eaters. Legend of the species' appetite was so great that the UK authorities drafted an announcement offering to pay young boys to catch worms and deliver them to feed Winston upon his the platypus attendant's logbook, the interns found evidence that his rations en route were being decreased as some of the worms began to it was water and air temperatures, which had been noted down at 8am and 6pm every day, that held the key to solving the readings were taken at two of the cooler points of the day, and still, as the ship crossed the equator over about a week, the recorded temperatures climbed well beyond 27C - what we now know is the safe threshold for platypus the benefit of hindsight - and an extra 80 years of scientific research into the species - the University of Sydney team determined Winston was essentially cooked they can't definitively rule out the submarine shell-shock story, they say the impact of those prolonged high temperatures alone would have been enough to kill Winston. "It's way easier to just shift the blame on the Germans, rather than say we weren't feeding it enough, or we weren't regulating its temperature correctly," Ewan Cowan tells the BBC."History is totally dependent on who's telling the story," Paul Zaki adds. Platypus diplomacy goes extinct Not to be dissuaded by its initial attempt at platypus diplomacy, Australia would try again in off the achievement of successfully breeding a platypus in captivity for the first time – a feat that wouldn't be replicated for another 50 years – Mr Fleay convinced the Australian government to let the Bronx Zoo have three of the creatures in a bid to deepen ties with the Winston's secret journey across the Pacific, this voyage garnered huge attention. Betty, Penelope and Cecil docked in Boston to much fanfare, before the trio was reportedly escorted via limousine to New York City, where Australia's ambassador was waiting to feed them the ceremonial first would die soon after she arrived, but Penelope and Cecil quickly became celebrities. Crowds clamoured for a glimpse of the animals. A wedding was planned. The tabloids obsessed over their every move. Platypus are solitary creatures, but New York had been promised lovers. And while Cecil was lovesick, Penelope was apparently sick of love. In the media, she was painted as a "brazen hussy", "one of those saucy females who like to keep a male on a string".Until 1953 that is, when the pair had a four-day fling - rather upsettingly described as "all-night orgies of love" - fuelled by "copious quantities of crayfish and worms".Alas, Penelope soon began nesting, and the world excitedly awaited her platypups, which were to be a massive scientific milestone – only the second bred in captivity, and the first outside four months of princess treatment and double rations for Penelope, zookeepers checked on her nest in front of a throng of excited reporters. But they found no babies - just a disgruntled-looking Penelope, who was summarily accused of faking her pregnancy to secure more worms and less Cecil."It was a whole scandal," Mr Cowan says - one from which Penelope's reputation never later, in 1957, she would vanish from her enclosure, sparking a weeks-long search and rescue mission which culminated in the zoo declaring her "presumed lost and probably dead".A day after the hunt for Penelope was called off, Cecil died of what the media diagnosed as a "broken heart".Laid to rest with the pair was any real future for platypus the Bronx Zoo would try to replicate the exchange with more platypuses in 1958, the finnicky beasts lasted under a year, and Australia soon tightened laws banning their export. The only two which have left the country since have lived at the San Diego Zoo since 2019.
The Guardian
11 hours ago
- The Guardian
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