A message in a bottle that took eight years to be found is now connecting an Australian hiking group and three Bay Area women.
During a recent beach cleanup, hikers in Townsville, Australia, found a bottle they first believed to be trash. They put it in their backpack and opened it once they reached their car.
To their surprise, the message inside was legible and read, “Dear reader, we wrote this note because we heard so many stories about doing this. We’re leaving Navini today at 5:00 Fijian time so please write back to 1002 York Town Drive Sunnyvale, CA.” It was dated July 2016 and signed by “Savannah, Kate, and Janice."
Members of Townsville Hike and Explore began their search for the three California women through social media and local news outlets but got stuck when they realized the Sunnyvale home referenced in the note had been sold in 2018.
The NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit picked up the search and successfully located Savannah Green, Janice Pierce and Kate Bonhan. The three women are close friends. Green recalls writing the note on her first trip to Fiji when she was just 11 years old. The Sunnyvale address was her childhood home.
“It kind of felt almost spiritual, like the way that it survived eight years and was still legible and my hair tie was still on the note,” Green said.
Pierce said she wondered about the message in the bottle when they recently revisited the island.
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“We were there again leaving Navini in their boat again and I remember saying, 'No one's found our bottle,'" she said. "And yet here we are two months later."
Navini is an island in Fiji, located some 1,900 miles away from Townsville, Australia.
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A picture of Green taken eight years ago shows her holding the bottle before they dropped it in the ocean on their boat ride out of the island.
The Australian hikers and the "Sunnyvale Three" recently found each other online.
"Before we knew it, Sandra was having a conversation via Instagram messages with Savannah, and it was just very exciting," hiker Susie Bidgood said.
The story has since been picked up by Australian media and gone viral on social media.
"It's kind of a little bit wild at the moment," Sandra Lamari said. "It's gotten a lot of traction lately, but it's really good…This is really what the world needed. The whole world needs right now a little bit of positivity."
The three friends said during the initial trip to Fiji they were also bringing donations to a nearby village that had been devastated by a hurricane. They now are hoping to meet their new Australian friends in person sometime soon.
