MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

A drifting bottle wishing a better world.

A bottle with a message sent to the sea by special education students from a school in Rio Gallegos, Argentine Patagonia was found three years later in Australia, reports the Buenos Aires press.

The person who answered the phone in the Paul VI School of Rio Gallegos couldn't believe when she was told the call was from Australia and that the bottle with the message had been found.

So far of the over 200 bottles launched to the sea by Argentine 11/12 year olds in August 2001 from Punta Loyola in Rio Gallegos, the only one to have been picked up by someone seems to have been the one found by a grandmother and her granddaughter in a beach in Adelaide, who then took it to the local newspaper The Advertiser.

The idea of the bottle came from teacher Delfi Rivas, who as part of a project to help understand the needs of children with incapacities and how to integrate them, proposed among other things lobbying for wheelchair ramps in corners, additional steps in buses and sending bottles with messages calling for equal rights and integration.

"The sea kept turning the bottles back and we thought we'd never know what happened", said Ms. Rivas.

But one of the bottles reached Adelaide, 12,000 kilometers from Argentina, but how it actually reached will remain a mystery.

The Advertiser in Adelaide found the story fascinating and contacted a local Ecuadorian teacher who spoke Spanish and phoned the Rio Gallegos School. Local reporter Cara Jenkins wrote the story.

"We wanted the world to know what we were doing and it seems we made it", said Ana Gonzalez one of the students who participated in the project. "We believe people with incapacities are discriminated in class, in school, in the neighborhood and we want to change that", added Marite Oyanarte.

The simple message wishing a better world said:

"We are students from the EGB School 39 of Rio Gallegos, Santa Cruz, Argentina and we're working to improve just a little the quality of life of those persons with special (limited) capacities. We've decided to send these bottles out to the sea to spread our wish to fight discrimination and contribute with a simple grain of sand to the improvement of this society which is not prepared as it should, to shelter all its children" We are asking you to join our challenge collaborating with whatever you can to better the infrastructure of a city so that it contemplates the reality which people with special capacities live and endure. Join us to make the world a place for all, bearing in mind at all times that integration and equality are possible. Thank you". PD. If you find this message contact our school so we'll know it wasn't in vain. August 2001".

How the bottle reached Australia is anybody's guess since the Falklands current along Patagonia moves south/north. The only chances are that somehow it drifted south along Tierra del Fuego and was then pushed towards Oceania. The other possibility is that the bottle cruised north to mid Atlantic and then was pushed down to South Africa and off to the east.