Tanja Rother

On a recent sunny Saturday morning two good friends, Ute and Dido, walked beautiful Ōhiwa Beach with their dogs.

Just like they often do. Only that morning something extraordinary happened.

As they chatted away about life and dogs, men and the future, Ute stumbled across a small glass bottle lying in front of her feet.

It became immediately clear that this was not a piece of rubbish washed up on the sandy beach.

The tightly sealed bottle contained a message. As they carefully opened the bottle to pull out two pieces of paper, they revealed that a man called Simon had thrown it into the waves at Aotea Great Barrier Island’s east coast about a month before it arrived at Ōhiwa.

A second piece of paper contained a message. It said:

“We are all visitors here,
To this time,
This place,
We are just passing through.
Our purpose is to
Observe, to learn,
To grow, to love.
Then we return home.”

There must have been a moment of silence and wonder for Ute and Dido as they received this special message in a bottle.

In contrast to the sea snail mail, the sender had provided his email address and so the two contacted Simon to tell him about their find.

Turns out Simon is an artist, a sculptor, from South Africa who moved to Aotearoa New Zealand some years ago, “after being intrigued by the dramatic beauty of the islands, mountains, its stories, and the profound reverence for nature’s rights”.

He was excited to hear the bottle had been found and loved the idea of it going on another journey.

Ute and Dido want to add to the message and throw it back into the ocean, hoping it gets found by someone somewhere.

One of the oldest messages in a bottle was apparently written aboard a German scientific ship in the Indian Ocean in 1886 and found 132 years later at a beach in Western Australia (Washington Post, March 7, 2018).

So, no one knows how long the bottle that now connects Simon, Ute and Dido will drift and who will receive it. Once thrown into the waves, it is up to the currents to determine its destiny.

In our time of fast-paced, fleeting, and instant communications, Simon’s message in a bottle is a great reminder of the beauty of slowness, wonder and marvel, human connections and our place in this world.

n Tanja Rother is an independent historian and writer based at Ōhiwa Harbour.

Email: [email protected]