Melanie Riley
LETTERS full of teenage dreams have been returned to their authors recently, after being discovered in trenches near the agriculture sheds at Grant High School.
The school experienced a water leak during the school holidays which prompted the find.
Groundskeeper Neil Tobin said that the letters were stumbled upon by chance while he was trying to find the leaky pipe.
He had started to dig a trench to prepare for the plumbers and after they had dug quite a way through the gravel with a small excavator, the discovery was made.
Mr Tobin said even though it turned out that he was digging in the wrong area, it had certainly paid off.
“These possibly would have stayed under the earth forever,” he said.
Mr Tobin said that even though it was quite some time after, he believed that now was better than later for the find.
“Somebody in fifty years time could have dug it up and found the same thing, and then we would have been looking for eighty year olds,” he said.
He said there were two bottles found, with a total of three or four letters in each.
The letters were by past students to their future selves, dating back to 2005.
There were many references of the era made in the letters, including mentions of Happy Gilmore, Nokia mobile phones and The OC.
The letters were part of a project in Scott Dickson’s year ten class and the plan was to bury the bottles and dig them up two years later.
Now, eighteen years later the students have been able to look back on their teenage dreams.
Cameron Hart was the owner of one of the discovered letters.
Mr Hart wrote about travelling to Tasmania and England to play soccer, watching Simple Plan in concert and growing a goatee.
Mr Hart said his fifteen year old self would be happy with his positive outlook of life, and his role now as a disability support worker.
“Empowering and supporting people is what I’m good at,” he said.
“I’ve always led by example in sports and life.”
Mr Hart that he would not likely see Simple Plan in concert again, and instead wants to focus on continuing to travel overseas and saving to buy a house.
Matthew Bailey was also one of the authors.
His included plans of visiting America for the first time, and seeing Green Day for the first time, both of which he has now done multiple times.
He said that the concert convinced him to take up playing the guitar.
He said his fifteen year old self would be proud of who he has become today.
“I actually want to do a video writing a letter back to my fifteen year old self, he would want to know all about America,” he said.
“I would tell my past self to keep going. You’re gonna be fine.”
Several of the letters have since been collected and returned to their rightful owners.
There are potentially more bottles under the ground, but there are no plans to dig them up anytime soon.
