Portrait of Corporal Martin Young

Studio portrait of 3902 Corporal (Cpl) Martin James Young. A railway employee from Ballarat, Victoria, he embarked for overseas from Sydney aboard HMAT Commonwealth (A73) with the 29th Battalion on 19 September 1916. While at sea, he penned a note to his sweetheart, Catherine Harris, sealed it in a bottle and threw it overboard into the Indian Ocean. The bottle, with letter intact, was discovered over 50 years later in 1967 near Warpole, WA and was finally read by Catherine (then 78 years old). Cpl Young married an Englishwoman in January 1917 and returned to Australia in 1920. During the war Catherine was engaged to an Australian soldier who later died in France. She later married a baker, Arthur Rollason and together they moved to Euroa. Both Cpl Young and Catherine never saw each other again. The letter and the bottle are held in the Memorial's National Collection.

• Photograph of Mrs Rollason with daughters