A Kimberley woman has made an incredible discovery in the pindan dirt of Broome's iconic Roebuck Bay.
Ingrid Otaola Zarraga was wandering around the mangroves when she came across a tiny bottle.
"There was just a very tiny little bit sticking out from the ground and because of the size and the shape, I knew straightaway it was going to be something special," she said.
Ms Zarraga dug up the glass bottle, but because it was engraved with Japanese characters, she did not know what she had found.
"I thought it was one of those perfume bottles that I usually find," she said.
Thanks to the power of social media, she was able to get a translation of the characters on the glass.
The Japanese kanji and katakana characters spelt out the phrase, 'cocaine eye drops'.
"Obviously, the first reaction is to have a bit of a laugh. But when you look a bit more into it, it's pretty incredible," Ms Zarraga said.
Medicine a form of anaesthetic
John Lamb is finishing his PhD study into the history of Japanese immigrants in Broome.
One of the people he studied was Dr Tadashi Suzuki, a medical doctor who first came to the town in 1910.
Mr Lamb had never seen anything like the cocaine eye drop bottle, but had seen other similar bottles with Dr Suzuki's name on them.
"The other bottle I've seen was a most unusual one, identifying it as belonging to Suzuki's clinic," he said.
"Dr Suzuki was first of five Japanese doctors who practised in Broome. They were the first Japanese doctors to gain registration in an Australian colony or state."
Dr Lamb believed the small bottle belonged to the Japanese hospital in Broome, located next door to Dr Suzuki's clinic.
"It's presumably made in Japan, though it could have been made in Hong Kong or Singapore by a Japanese company," he said.
It was not a stretch to say the cocaine eye drops could have been administered in the Japanese hospital in Broome.
In 1993, an article published in Japan from the Naito Museum of Pharmaceutical Science and Industry outlined the historical use of cocaine eye drops as a local anaesthetic.
According to the article, "the solution was diluted down by 150 times" and was "applied to the eyes".
Cocaine eye drops were also mentioned in both the 1926 Handbook for Sales and Making of Medicines and 1928's Compendium of Medicine Manufacturing.
Broome collectors archiving history
Keven Foulkes was another avid collector of historical objects and had been collecting bottles for 30 years.
His collection of 1,000 bottles were found on Broome beaches.
"I have got a fair few Japanese bottles as well that I have kept; a lot of Japanese sake and beer bottles, and also the medical bottles," he said.
He too believed the cocaine eye drops could have been sold from Dr Suzuki's clinic.
As for Ms Zarraga, this latest find was practically modern compared with other artefacts she had previously discovered.
"I volunteered back home in my country [Spain], since I was 15 years old, reconstructing Roman paths … I went and formed part of a organisation that went around searching for Roman items and rocks, so we could rebuild walls and paths that had been built by the Romans," she said.
Since moving to Broome, she had been looking at the ground for the better part of 15 years.
"My kids hate it … I do not stop looking to the ground. My kids are quite embarrassed!" she said.
But she said the mystery spurs her on.
"To know that someone has actually been touching that … you wonder whose hands they were …. And what the outcome was of that person's life," she said.
Ms Zarraga said it wasn't easy or pretty to find the objects in the pindan red dirt.
"You have to dig and you gotta have red dirty fingernails and fingers," she said.
"I think you have, like, kind of a sixth sense. Anyone that actually goes and looks for things like this will tell you that after a while, you can feel it as you look around on the ground and the soil where you actually might be able to find something."
Ms Zarraga said she would donate the latest find to the Broome Historical Museum.
"I think the best thing for it is to go to someone that's going to make a better use of it. There's no point in it staying at home and picking up dust," she said.
