Occasionally when people go digging into old walls they will find old newspapers, often used as a form of insulation, but one Australian tradesman found something special: a time capsule note from 1995.
The author, who did not expect his note to be found for at least another 30 years, not only gave a glimpse into the past but his take on where things were headed. And he is not entirely off the mark. (And neither is his wife who suggested his hidden digest would be uncovered by 2020.)
“Hello whoever you are,” the letter opens. “This letter was put into this stud wall on Easter Saturday, 15th April, 1995. It is pissing down and so a good day to be renovating.”
Sasha Ilic, a tradesman, was working on a house in Sydney, Australia when he came across Greg Wilkinson’s note, accompanied by a photo of Wilkinson and his wife Roslyn Green, on their wedding day several months earlier.
“When I saw the letter and read it, I thought it was pretty cool – I’ve only every come across old newspapers hidden in walls. I wasn’t sure it was real until I saw the photo,” Ilic told the Sydney Morning Herald.
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Wilkinson typed the letter on a top of the line computer at the time – a 486 laptop with eight megabytes of RAM and a 240 megabyte hard drive. He printed it off on a Cannon Bubble Jet BJ-10sx printer, which was “top of the PC Scale right now.”
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“The big deal at the moment is the Internet,” he wrote. “This is just exploding and every man and his dog wants to ‘surf’ the internet
“Please tell me this expression has now died.”
Sorry Greg.
After listing off a few more facts of the day, he gets into his predictions for the days ahead.
“Islam will become the next ideological problem plunging large parts of the globe into a ridiculous ‘Holy war,’” Wilkinson proclaims. “Each side believing they are more religious/righteous than the other.”
He also suggests “China will semi democratize, gear up as a world economic super power and then look out! America will become their largest trading partner and if they decide they would like more space, I suspect Australia could become their target.”
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Ilic told the Herald he posted the note on Facebook hoping to find Wilkinson, and his search was fruitful.
The now 61-year-old prognosticator was found on Facebook.
“I received a Facebook messenger request and a very nice guy asked if I was the right guy and pointed me to it…. and there it was. It almost brought me to tears,” he said.
He said he came up with the idea after finding old newspapers in walls of other places he had renovated.
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