©2009 Full Circle Magazine.
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Message in a Bottle
by Sean Houghton
In an act of innocent whimsy seven years
ago, two 10-year-old girls walked to the
end of the pier at the Simon’s Town
Waterfront and dropped a Krest Lemonade
bottle into the water – addressed to
mermaids!
From perhaps the most unsophisticated and
unreliable means of communication, usually
associated with desert island desperation, fast-
forward to a railway station in Athens, Greece
and the cutting-edge digital communication of
today. On 16 July 2009 Catherine Attridge,
now 17, was on holiday waiting for a train and
decided to use her friend’s I-Phone to check
her Facebook page for any messages. As they
were about to leave, a message came through
from someone called Mariska saying their
‘message in a bottle’ had been found on a
beach in Mozambique. Catherine couldn’t
believe it and immediately SMSd her best-
friend, Bianca van Breda, who was on holiday
in Tulbagh, South Africa, to tell her of the
amazing discovery. Both had long since
forgotten their message in a bottle and their
fascination with mermaids.
On about 20 June 2009, Tienie Ras, who
runs a motor-repair company in Maputo, drove
about 20km north of the city to Macaneta for
some surf-fishing. He and a friend noticed a
green bottle bobbling around in the waves.
“It’s just rubbish,” Tienie’s fishing-friend
asserted.
“But there’s something in it,” Tienie
responded and went to pick it up. He forced
the tightly-fused cap off and it almost
disintegrated in his hand. Inside the bottle
were two letters addressed to mermaids, one
signed ‘Catherine Attridge’, the other signed
only ‘Bianca’. Tienie took the bottle and letters
home with him, and about 10 days later met
Andre Wolhuter of Fish Hoek. When Tienie
learned where Andre was from he asked him,
“Isn’t Simon’s Town near Fish Hoek?” Andre
answered that it was and asked why Tienie was
interested. Tienie told Andre about the
messages in the bottle and said it would be
great if Andre could return the bottle to the girls.
Andre immediately said he would do what he
could.
Andre was intrigued, because anyone who has
done geography at school would know that the
warm Mozambican current flows down the east
coast of Africa so it shouldn’t be possible for a
bottle to float up the coast.
In Richards Bay a few days later, Andre told
the story to his friend, Werner van Schalkwyk.
Werner in turn repeated the story at work the
next day and one of the ladies in the office,
Mariska, said she would try to track the girls
down on Facebook. She wrote to every
Catherine Attridge she could find. The first
response was negative but the second was from
the correct Catherine on holiday in Greece.
By the time Andre had got back to Fish Hoek,
Catherine and Bianca had both been located
digitally. He was struck by the ironic juxtaposition
of 21st-Century digital technology resolving in a
couple of days what had unfolded naturally with
olde worlde charm over seven years. He then
wrote to the girls saying that the letter was for
their parents and their parents should decide
whether to let the girls meet him to fetch the
bottle and speak about their adventure.
Werner van Schalkwyk did his own Internet
sleuthing to find someone who could shed light
on the odd place the bottle was found. He
eventually was put in touch with
oceanographer Juliette Hermes, who lives in
Kommetjie and works for the South African
Environmental Observation Network (SAEON)
which is ‘an information management network
to serve as research
September 2009 Vol6 No9
Bianca and Catherine with their bottle
