00:01On this North West Tasmanian beach 25 years ago, these two women forged a connection,
00:09despite being thousands of kilometres apart.
00:12In 2001, Stanley resident Diane Charles found a barnacle-covered bottle had washed up,
00:18and there was a message inside it.
00:20It happened to be the morning of my father-in-law's funeral,
00:23so I'd gone for an early morning walk to sort of clear the air
00:27and then to find a gift in the sea was pretty exciting.
00:33Four years earlier, cruise ship bartender Erika Marina Boyero had dropped it into the ocean near Norway.
00:40Her message read,
00:41Life has taught me all is possible. I wish you good fortune wherever you are.
00:46And included contact details for her father in Colombia.
00:50One of the days that I called him and said,
00:52Hey, you received a fax from Australia.
00:56I said, What? I don't know nobody in Australia.
01:00So I started to remember, Oh, the bottle. Somebody found the bottle.
01:05After keeping in contact since 2001, Erika messaged Diane just a few weeks ago
01:11and said she was coming to Tasmania to meet her old friend at long last
01:15and see just how far her bottle floated.
01:18Erika had said, Oh, I just need a hug and a coffee. I don't need to stay or anything.
01:22And I said, Of course she's staying with me. And then I thought, Oh, well, if you don't get on,
01:26she can go on away. But now she's staying.
01:30For Erika, travelling to meet Diane has been an important journey.
01:33I just feel beautiful and I feel release that I make it.
01:40The bottle, with Erika's hopeful message, is now on display at Stanley's Discovery Museum.
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