On an overcast morning during Aotearoa's first lockdown Bella Andrew passed her message in a bottle to her father Philip.

He might have a better chance of hurling it further into the outgoing tide at Pencarrow at the mouth of Te Whanganui a Tara than her, she thought.

As it landed with a distant splash they both wondered about its impending journey.

'I thought it might travel all round the world, maybe even to my sister in Germany. I worried a shark might swallow it or that it might just wash up on the rocks at Pencarrow where we threw it into the sea,” says Bella, who says she had been precisely 8 ⅓ at the time.

It didn't reach Europe but instead washed up 467 nautical miles (864.8km) north at Papamoa Beach near Tauranga just shy of three years later.

Rydn Low, right, and his father-in-law Don McNeilly at Papamoa Beach with Bella Andrew's message in a bottle. Photo: Supplied/Stuff.

Two weeks ago on a Friday, Rydn​ Low was walking along the beach at Papamoa when he saw something washing around in the shallows.

Picking up the barnacle-covered glass bottle he fished out Bella's letter.

'Hello, my name is Isabella Andrew. Thank you for finding my message in a bottle…”

Bella, now 11 ⅔, wrote about Covid, her school, her family and pets; 'this week we got two Burmese kittens!” she informed her then nameless recipient.

She and her two brothers had been bored rigid when Covid forced them into lockdown at their Lowry Bay home in Eastbourne.

Philip Andrew and his daughter Bella, 11, tossed a message in a bottle sealed with preserve wax in the sea at Eastbourne three years ago. It was found in Papamoa a few weeks ago. Photo: Juan Zarma-Perini/Stuff.

'We were bored out of our minds. We walked every day, we flew kites and then my Dad suggested putting a message in a bottle and sending it out to sea.”

What journey the bottle had taken over the past three years was a mystery.

The currents would suggest it might have gone up the west coast of the North Island and down to Papamoa, but who knows, says Andrew.

Low, 19, says he'd found some strange things washed up on the beach during his daily walks – most recently a whole lot of kiwifruit, probably washed down from the orchards of Matakana Island in Cyclone Gabrielle – but never a message in a bottle.

'It blew my mind.

'I was out with my father-in-law and my two dogs, and we saw it washing around in the shallows. For it to have been floating around for three years and still be intact is just amazing.”

Philip Andrew and his daughter Bella at the beach in Pencarrow, Eastbourne where they launched Bella's message in a bottle in May 2020. Photo: Juan Zarma-Perini/Stuff.

Low couldn't wait to get in touch with Bella by snail mail so like any generation Z-er worth their salt he did some detective work matching up the names of her siblings she mentioned in the letter with her last name and found one of her older sisters in Queenstown who relayed the message to Bella and her father.

In a lightning strikes twice scenario, Andrew was just a year older than his daughter when he and his older brother sent a message in a bottle down the Tūranganui River in Gisborne in 1967. It was found a year later on Seatoun beach by a man looking for flotsam and jetsam a week after the Wahine disaster.

In another twist, Bella and her mother had visited Papamoa just a few weeks ago for the first time.

Bella, then aged 8 ⅓ , wrote about Covid, her school, her family and pets. Photo: Supplied/Stuff.

Bella can't wait for Low's father-in-law to deliver the bottle back to them when he visits Wellington.

The bottle and sea smudged letter will have pride of place in her room. Maybe be a show and tell at school could be on the cards.

After such serendipity she's thinking of having another crack at getting a message to her sister in Europe, via bottle.

- Bess Mason/Stuff.