More than a century after they were written, messages in a bottle penned by two Australian soldiers in 1916 have been discovered along the country’s south-western coastline.

The letters, written just days into their voyage to join the battlefields of France during World War One, carried light-hearted notes.

Pte Malcolm Neville told his mother that the food on board was “real good” and that they were “as happy as Larry.” He was later killed in action at the age of 28. The other soldier, 37-year-old Pte William Harley, survived the war and eventually returned home.

Earlier this month, local resident Deb Brown and her family found the bottle on Wharton Beach near Esperance, Western Australia, during one of their regular quad bike trips to clean up litter. “We do a lot of cleaning up on our beaches and so would never go past a piece of rubbish. So this little bottle was lying there waiting to be picked up,” Ms Brown told the Associated Press.

Though the paper was damp, both notes were still readable. Ms Brown began tracing the soldiers’ families to return the long-lost letters. She found Pte Neville’s great-nephew, Herbie Neville, after searching his name and hometown online, as the soldier had included his mother’s address in the message. Mr Neville told ABC News the experience was “unbelievable” for his family.

Pte Harley’s letter, meanwhile, was addressed “to whoever found the bottle” since his mother had passed away years earlier. His granddaughter, Ann Turner, said she and his four other surviving grandchildren were “absolutely stunned” by the discovery. “It really does feel like a miracle and we do very much feel like our grandfather has reached out for us from the grave,” she said.

The letter mentioned the bottle had been thrown “somewhere in the Bight,” referring to the Great Australian Bight. According to an oceanography professor quoted by ABC, it may have drifted only a few weeks before washing up at Wharton Beach, where it likely remained buried for over a century.

With inputs from BBC