Boomerang bottle's 24-year voyage

When Tokoroa woman Kylie Tatham-Tahere was 8 she threw a bottle, with a message in it, into the sea at Cooks Beach.

The bottle was forgotten until Tom Hussona, 8, of Auckland, found it at the same Coromandel beach on Christmas Day 2008, almost a quarter of a century later. Mum Erica said the family did not believe Tom at first. "We have been there many times after storms and found many things ... but never a message in a bottle."

The bottle was intact but the metal lid had rusted, and water had got in. "The message was just in hundreds of bits," Erica said. "The paper was so delicate ... We had to try to get between the folds and unravel it with toothpicks." Miraculously they could read a name and contact details Kylie Tatham, Tokoroa. The Hussonas began hunting for the girl who had launched the bottle 24 years earlier. They tracked her down through the Old Friends website.

Ms Tatham-Tahere said she was "blown away" by a text message from Ms Hussona about the bottle. "We had a family home at Cooks Beach and would go there every holiday," she said. "We just decided to do one (message in a bottle), me and my cousin.

"Dad took us out in his boat because he reckoned if we just dropped it out from the beach it would come straight back in."

The first contact between Tom and Ms Tatham-Tahere led to more. In mid-February the two new friends met in Tokoroa.

Ms Tatham-Tahere has not been back to Cooks Beach since she was 11 but is now planning a holiday with her husband and three children and the Hussona family to revisit her old holiday haunt. And Tom has released his own message in a bottle, ensuring water does not get in by using a cork and wax to seal it. Just like Ms Tatham-Tahere, he released the bottle at Cooks Beach, paddling out in a kayak to drop it out to sea.

- © Fairfax NZ News