BENDIGO is at the centre of a mysterious century-old Anzac love story.
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A digger, "Billy", from Bendigo is said to have departed Melbourne on board the A20 HMAT Hororata exactly 100 years ago this Sunday.
As the ship passed via the west coast of Australia, Billy wrote a letter to a Miss A Bird, placed it in a bottle and threw it into the ocean.
Incredibly, it washed up on shore, someone found it and posted it to the address stated on the envelope: Miss A Bird, Morley Johnson and Company, Mitchell Street, Bendigo.
The Bendigo Advertiser published the story on December 9, 1914.
The report read: "Miss A. Bird, an employee at Morley Johnson's warehouse, yesterday received a letter from a friend on one of the Australian troopships in a somewhat singular manner. One of Miss Bird's friends, who is on board the troopship Hororata, which left Australia with a section of the first Australian Expeditionary Force troops, wrote a letter addressed to the young lady, and after placing it in a bottle, which was sealed, dropped it overboard when some 150 miles from Albany. The bottle was washed up on the beach at Albany and the letter was recovered. It was immediately posted and reached Miss Bird yesterday."
The man who found the love letter has been searching for "Billy" and "Birdie" for 15 years.
War memorabilia collector Rick Cove of Paynesville in Gippsland came across it while looking for a book to help him understand an army car he bought.
He found the book in 1999 and found Billy's letter wedged between its pages.
"Dear Birdie, I am writing you a note and putting it in a bottle and then I'm going to throw it overboard to see if it ever reaches you," the letter reads. It is signed, "love Billy".
"The question is who was Billy? Who was Miss A Bird? Did Billy survive World War I and who posted it to her?" Mr Cove said.
"I’ve been looking for 15 years and I’ve never been able to track down the correct people."
In his quest Mr Cove has enlisted the help of ANZAC Centenary Commemoration chief Ted Baillieu.
Mr Baillieu has put forward three potential names.
William Darwin and William Hayes, who both enlisted from Bendigo and a William Edgar Gordon Paul from Bendigo who enlisted from Footscray.
Bendigo RSL president Cliff Richards said the mystery was remarkable and needed to be solved.
"Certainly to connect with the family of William would be wonderful," Mr Richards said.
"The fact that someone’s put a message in a bottle and dropped it in the middle of the ocean and it's been picked up and delivered is an unbelievable fact."
"It would be nice to connect with the family.
"It's important that we touch base with the past in this manner."
The story came to light when Mr Cove told his story on Channel 7 news on Wednesday night.
