UNABLE to get to school after the Allyn River flooded, an 11-year-old Cameron Hipwell began writing a note that opened with ‘‘Dear finder, if you find this letter, please write back.’’
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Almost two years after sending his message in a plastic bottle from his home on an Upper Allyn beef and dairy farm, it has been found more than 100 kilometres downstream by James Madigan, whose family history is intertwined with the Hipwells.
‘‘I was hoping this message would go somewhere, but never thought it would get that far,’’ Cameron, now 13, said.
The bottle travelled from the Allyn River on June 14, 2011, through Vacy into the Paterson River and onwards through Hinton into the Hunter River.
It would have continued its journey all the way out to sea, had it not become lodged in a rock retaining wall along the river bank at Hexham.
Mr Madigan, from the Hunter-Central Rivers Catchment Management Authority, found the bottle on March 18 while picking up rubbish in the estuary.
He said finding a message in a bottle was ‘‘very uncommon’’ and Cameron’s the first in recent memory.
‘‘There wasn’t much rubbish around at the time, so it stuck out like a sore thumb,’’ he said.
Mr Madigan read Cameron’s letter aloud to his team and recognised the surname Hipwell.
He replied to Cameron’s letter to explain he had attended Gresford Public School, where his father Geoff Madigan had been a principal during the 1980s.
‘‘There was an Angus Hipwell who went to Gresford Public School!’’ he wrote.
‘‘Do you know him?’’
Angus is Cameron’s father and was a student at the now-closed Eccleston Public School.
‘‘I was hoping they [the recipient] might have something in common with me,’’ Cameron said.
‘‘But I thought this was pretty freaky.’’
