Photograph of Mrs Rollason with daughters

Portrait of Mrs Catherine Rollason (nee Harris) showing a photograph of 3902 Corporal (Cpl) Martin James Young to her grand-daughters (from left) Helen, Ruth and Lyndall White. Six days after embarking on 19 September 1916 and still in Australian waters aboard HMAT Commonwealth (A73), Cpl Young penned a note to Catherine Harris, then his sweetheart, sealed it in a bottle and threw it overboard into the Indian Ocean. Over 50 years later in 1967, the bottle, with the letter intact, was discovered 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.