A message in a bottle flung into the ocean from one of the world's most remote islands has washed up on the shores of a sub-Antarctic outpost inhabited by Australians.

Key points: Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service ranger Stella Thomas was picking up marine debris from the shores of Macquarie Island when she spotted a green glass bottle, cork intact, nestled in kelp

Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service ranger Stella Thomas was picking up marine debris from the shores of Macquarie Island when she spotted a green glass bottle, cork intact, nestled in kelp With the help of forceps and her 40 colleagues, Ms Thomas extracted a message from within the wine bottle but it appeared to be blank

With the help of forceps and her 40 colleagues, Ms Thomas extracted a message from within the wine bottle but it appeared to be blank After some careful shading over the paper the message was revealed, but crucial elements of the note remain unknown

Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife ranger Stella Thomas had to look twice when she spotted the green wine bottle nestled in kelp, cork intact, while cleaning up marine debris on Macquarie Island earlier this year.

With the help of forceps — and under the watchful eyes of the island's 40-strong staff — the note inside the bottle was removed.

It appeared to be blank.

"We thought it was a bit of a joke, that nothing was written on the paper, and we tried all these different things," Ms Thomas said.

"There was three of us who stayed up quite late trying to get the message out of the paper."

Lightly shaded pencil revealed part of the message, but contact details of the writer were not visible. ( Supplied: AAD/Stella Thomas )

Careful shading over the page with a grey lead pencil proved the trick, but crucial elements of the message remain unseen.

"Hi, my name is (illegible)," the message read. "I am from Poland (Europe). I am during a trip to Bouvet Island. Today is April 6th 2015. "If you find this message, send email. My email address is 'JUDBAS@....PL'."

Bouvet Island is halfway between South Africa and Antarctica, surrounded by high glacial cliffs and essentially uninhabitable for humans.

Ms Thomas and her colleagues did some internet sleuthing to see if they could find tours through the Norwegian territory conducted during April 2015 and discovered a polar cruise ship had sailed through at that time.

Stella Thomas was surprised to find the bottle, and more surprised when it contained a message. ( Supplied: AAD/Stella Thomas )

She has tried to contact the company without success.

"There's nothing like a good mystery, even if I don't find the person who wrote it, it'll always make me wonder who wrote it," Ms Thomas said.

"It'd be really cool to be able to know their story, what they were doing there and what the rest of their trip was like."

Ms Thomas said she had swept Macquarie Island's shores for marine debris several times over the past few months and was taken aback by the number of plastic bottles washing ashore.

Her imagination had often wandered to the potential of messages in bottles, she said, a "romantic idea" that brought up dreams of ancient times.

"When you're picking up hundreds of plastic bottles on a sub-Antarctic island, you hope you'll find something positive out of it," Ms Thomas said.

Macquarie Island station leader Kat Panjari and Stella Thomas used a pencil in their attempts to decipher the message. ( Supplied: AAD/Andrea Turbett )

But the message in the bottle has not only satisfied Ms Thomas's dreams of adventure and intrigue.

She joked that only living in space could be a more isolating experience; the message in the bottle was the first contact she had with people from the outside world apart from friends or family since travelling to Macquarie Island in March.

"We don't have a lot of contact other than the internet with the outside world, so it was pretty cool," Ms Thomas said.

"I'd love to know the story of what happened to the bottle after it got thrown over the side of the boat until I found it on Macquarie Island. It'd be cool to know how many laps of the globe it did … and how many places it almost came to shore."

The sleuths recovered as much of the message as they could. ( Supplied: AAD/Stella Thomas )

Not the first bottle discovery

It's happened on the Island at least once before.

In 2014, rangers on Macquarie Island found a message in a plastic bottle.

This one contained a US dollar bill and clear contacts, Theo from Holland, Kimmo from Finland, and Irek from Russia who had been onboard the ship STS Sedov, when they dropped the bottle overboard at the bottom of South America in 2012.

It is estimated this bottle was carried 17,000 kilometres from its point of origin at South America's Cape Horn by circumpolar currents.

And this time Ms Thomas had a serious message for the mystery author of the latest message.

"I'd like to say I found your message and it's really cool, but my final word to them would be don't throw things into the sea," she said.

The rubbish that washes up on Macquarie Island is bagged up, ready to be taken off by helicopter during an island resupply visit at the end of each summer season.