First World War soldiers’ messages in a bottle found on Australian beach

This photo provided by Deb Brown shows a bottle with letters inside (Deb Brown/AP)

Messages in a bottle written by two Australian soldiers a few days into their voyage to the battlefields of France during the First World War have been found more than a century later on Australia’s coast.

The Brown family found the Schweppes bottle just above the waterline at Wharton Beach, near Esperance, in Western Australia state on October 9, Deb Brown said.