Message in a bottle thrown into sea in 1985 washes up on WA beach

A message in a bottle thrown into the sea almost 40 years ago has been discovered on a beach north of Perth.

Meg Prideaux took her son Leo, 4, “looking for treasure” at the beach in their hometown of Lancelin on Tuesday, when he spotted the bottle with a rolled-up note inside.

WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Message in a bottle found in Lancelin north of Perth.

“We brought it home and we waited for my daughter and my husband to come home, but we couldn’t get it open,” she said.

“There was a bit of corrosion and a few barnacles had started to grow, so it had been there for a while.”

After finally managing to carefully open the lid with a knife, they slowly pulled out the note and unrolled it.

It was still a little soggy but clearly legible — and dated 1985.

The message had been written 39 years ago by then-teenagers Joanne Hunter and Louise Pocock.

The 15-year-olds were enjoying a holiday at the Hunter family’s beach house in Lancelin, about two hours north of Perth, when they had the idea to write a message in a bottle.

Their note came with a simple request — that anyone who finds the bottle send a return letter to the girls in suburban Perth.

The pair had hoped it might wash up in an exotic land far away but it came right back to Lancelin Beach where it was buried for almost 40 years.

7NEWS has helped put Meg and Leo Prideaux in touch with Hunter, who is now Joanne Evans and aged 54.

“I was like, ‘Oh my god. Is that really that?’ I haven’t thought about that in forever,” Evans said.

“We wrote it at night and sealed it with wax and then we actually swam it out into the water because, at first, we threw it from the beach and it kept washing back in, so we swam out the next morning.

“My family had a beach house directly across the road and Louise came with my family for the school holidays.

“She was always full of excitement and had such a great imagination, it was her idea to do it.”

Pocock died of leukaemia six years ago but her sister, Sarah Martin, said she would have enjoyed “such a kick” knowing the message had been found.

“Oh, she’d be so happy, she really would — especially that a little boy found it as well after 39 years just sitting in the sand,” Martin said.

“She was a really great, fun, happy-go-lucky sort of person and really did well in her life, very artistic and creative, and she met a wonderful man and married him and had a beautiful little girl.

“As time goes on, you feel like they’re slipping further away from you and then this message is such a wonderful thing that just came out of the blue.”

She said it had put a smile on the faces of Pocock’s whole family.

The Prideaux family now plan to meet Evans to return the bottle and the message to its original author some time in the near future.