It looked like “a lovely old bottle,” but a woman from found something much more intriguing on the beach in Western Australia: the world’s oldest known message in a bottle, CNN reported. The Illman family were driving through a beach north of Wedge Island on 21 January when the car became bogged down in the sand, and Mrs Illman and her friend decided to go for a walk. The message, dated 12 June 1886, was thrown into the Indian Ocean from the German sailing barque Paula, which was en route from Cardiff, Wales, to its destination of Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). Authorities in the Netherlands and Germany also helped in providing more about the bottle, which they revealed was was a part of a long-term German Naval Observatory programme to study global ocean currents in a bit to find shipping routes which were more efficient and quicker. The previous world record for the oldest message in a bottle was 108 years, 4 months, 18 days from the time it was thrown into the water until the time it was discovered, the Western Australia Museum said. Australian, German and Dutch researchers worked together to verify the note's authenticity, according to a report from the Western Australia Museum. "It just looked like a lovely old bottle so I picked it up thinking it might look good in my bookcase," Illman said as quoted in a press release by Western Australia Museum. My son's girlfriend was the one who discovered the note when she went to tip the sand out.”

Illman said the note was “damp, rolled tightly and wrapped with string.”

Experts said the bottle was a 19th century Dutch gin bottle, CNN reported. We took it home and dried it out, and when we opened it we saw it was a printed form, in German, with very faint German handwriting on it.”

The Illmans took their find to the museum which established the bottle was a 19th Century Dutch gin bottle, the paper and coloration were consistent with 19th Century paper, and the German barque Paula sailed from Cardiff to Makassar (Indonesia) in 1886. "A handwriting comparison of the bottle message signed by the captain and Paula's Meteorological Journal, shows the handwriting is identical in terms of cursive style, slant, font, spacing, stroke emphasis, capitalisation and numbering style," Dr. Ross Anderson, Assistant Curator Maritime Archaeology at the WA Museum, was quoted as saying in the press release by the museum. The date and the coordinates correspond exactly with those on the bottle message,” Ross Anderson, assistant curator maritime archaeology at the WA Museum, said in a statement.
A message in a bottle found in Australia is confirmed to have been adrift for almost 132 years, making it reportedly the oldest known message in a bottle.