The author of a message in a bottle has been located some 50 years after he threw it into the Indian Ocean. Paul Gilmore, then 13, dropped the bottle into the ocean while sailing with his family on a liner from the UK to Melbourne. His note was recently found in South Australia by 13-year-old Jyah Elliott, who was out fishing with his father.

Mr Gilmore told the BBC that he was ‘always hoping that a letter would come back’.

In the note, written on 17th November 1969, Paul Gilmore wrote that he was travelling to Australia on the ship Fairstar and was 1,000 miles away from Fremantle. He urged whoever found the note to reply.

Mr Gilmore, now a gardener and business owner, said: ‘I remember vividly how I sent those letters away. They were important to me – part of the adventure to the other side of the world. I always loved reading adventure stories like Robinson Crusoe.’