{"id":111764,"date":"2025-08-02T01:48:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-02T01:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/111764\/"},"modified":"2025-08-02T01:48:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-02T01:48:10","slug":"he-was-so-excited-painter-discovers-122-year-old-message-in-a-bottle-inside-lighthouse-walls-tasmania","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/111764\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018He was so excited\u2019: painter discovers 122-year-old message in a bottle inside lighthouse walls | Tasmania"},"content":{"rendered":"

A painter in Tasmania<\/a> has uncovered a sealed glass bottle containing a message that was hidden within a wall cavity of the historic Cape Bruny lighthouse more than 120 years ago.<\/p>\n

Specialist painter Brian Burford was performing routine maintenance on the seaside structure when the discovery took place, according to Annita Waghorn, historic heritage manager for the Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile he was working inside the lantern room \u2013 which is the room at the top of the lighthouse where the lens and lightening mechanism is \u2013 dealing with some rust and corrosion, he popped through into the wall cavity,\u201d Waghorn said.<\/p>\n

It was then that something in the cavity caught Burford\u2019s eye, \u201cglinting\u201d in the light.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was so excited that he gave me a call and said that he found a message in a bottle,\u201d Waghorn said.<\/p>\n

\u2018The bottle was sealed with a cork coated in bitumen, which made removal challenging\u2019, said conservator Cobus van Breda. Photograph: Tasmania Museum and Art Gallery<\/p>\n

It turned out that the letter was not just a simple note, but an envelope containing two hand-written pages detailing upgrades made to the lighthouse in 1903.<\/p>\n

A staircase, floor, lantern room and lens were added to the heritage-listed lighthouse nearly 70 years after the original structure was built in 1838.<\/p>\n

The note was signed by lighthouse inspector for the Hobart Marine Board, JR Meech, who supervised the construction and maintenance of several well-known lighthouses around Tasmania including Cape Sorell, Maatsuyker Island, Tasman Island, Table Cape, and Mersey Bluff.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was incredibly exciting \u2026 it was such a mystery when it first came to what the message was about and how it had come to be in this inaccessible location within the tower,\u201d Waghorn said.<\/p>\n

But it wasn\u2019t an easy feat. Initially reluctant to open the bottle, Waghorn enlisted help from conservators at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery who carefully extracted the delicate aged paper.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe bottle was sealed with a cork coated in bitumen, which made removal challenging,\u201d Cobus van Breda, the museum\u2019s senior paper conservator, told the ABC.<\/p>\n

The note was signed by lighthouse inspector for the Hobart Marine Board, JR Meech, who had supervised the construction and maintenance of several well-known lighthouses around Tasmania. Photograph: Tasmania Museum and Art Gallery<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had to remove the bitumen from the top of the cork, then carefully work our way around the cork to detach it from the glass as the cork had been dipped in bitumen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe next challenge was to get the message out of the bottle. It had been folded in a way that made it quite challenging to get it through the narrow neck of the bottle without damaging it.\u201d<\/p>\n

It took several days to decipher Meech\u2019s message, the team said.<\/p>\n

Museum staff plan to put the letter on display for public viewing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A painter in Tasmania has uncovered a sealed glass bottle containing a message that was hidden within a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":111765,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4740,50],"class_list":{"0":"post-111764","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114956658728691234","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}