Bottle message suggests reunion for class of '97

Photo / Thinkstock

A message in a bottle that appears to have taken 14 years to make its way from Katikati to Tauranga washed up during heavy swells over the weekend.

Tauranga man Peter Phipps was out for his morning walk on Monday, when he spotted a weathered glass Coke bottle with something inside it at The Strand reclamation carpark.

The bottle, which lay in a puddle of water surrounded by branches and debris, washed on to the carpark from the harbour below.

Inside was a handwritten message on pieces of writing pad paper with sunflowers on the pages.

"I looked down and this was curled up inside the bottle and I thought 'it's a message in a bottle'," he said.

The letter read: The November 25, 2007, we will meet each other at Piccadilly Circus at 8.00 in the night in London. The only persons invited are: Lena Hensel (Germany), Sachi Kawaguchi (Japan), Nora Kronig (Switzerland), Livia Pelletier (Canada). All were exchange students at Katikati in 1997.

The message is then repeated in German, Swiss and Japanese.

Katikati College principal Neil Harray confirmed at least three of the students were enrolled at the school in 1997.

There was no label on the bottle, which felt smoothed by the sand, Mr Phipps said.

"This could have been dropped [in the carpark] but I doubt it very much."

Mr Phipps said he was no stranger to making good finds following a storm.

- APN