LONDON, Jan 19: A four-year-old British girl was stunned to receive a reply to her message in a bottle from a boy in Australia, her nursery said Thursday. Alesha Johnson chucked the bottle into the local Morecambe Bay on the northwest English coast in July. It contained a picture of herself and a brief message with her address.

“My name is Alesha. If you get this message, please write back,” it read.

This week she gained a new friend when Bob, 10, from Perth on the Western Australia coast, wrote back saying he found her bottle in a local boatyard.

Alesha’s surprised nursery manager Doreen Johnson said: “We were all very excited when the letter from Australia arrived addressed to Alesha. We never dreamed the bottle would go that far, it’s amazing.”

Bob wrote that he asked his father to look up Alesha’s home town Heysham on the Internet.

He drew a diagram showing the distance between the two locations — 14,500 kilometres.

The boy did not include his own details as he was moving house but promised to write again when he knew his new address. —AFP