Twenty-two years ago, Greg Wilkinson wrote a letter ‘to the future’.
In a world not all that long ago when Paul Keating was “pushing hard for Australia to become a Republic by 2000”, petrol was just $0.68/L and “surfing the Internet” was the latest craze, Wilkinson decided to leave a time capsule from Easter Saturday, 1995, with his scarily accurate predictions for the future in the wall of his home in inner Sydney.
A home he bought for $170,000.
Along with the three page letter outlining what life was like in 1995 was a photo of Wilkinson and his wife, Roslyn Green, on their wedding day.
Two decades on, the letter has been found by a group of Sydney tradesmen contracted to work on the Rozelle home’s renovations, which they posted to Facebook in an effort to track down its writer.
"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," Wilkinson, now 61, told The Sydney Morning Herald of rediscovering his time capsule.
"At first when I saw the letter up on Facebook I felt a little violated... Then having thought about it and with the predictions it really highlighted the progress of the internet in 22 years and, without it, how would they ever have found me?"
Although Wilkinson had originally hoped his letter wouldn't be found for at least 50 or 60 years, his wife who has since passed away correctly predicted it would be found closer to 2020.
Among his predictions for the future were Wilkinson's thoughts on how Islam would become "the next ideological problem plunging large parts of the world into a ridiculous 'holy war'", that families would go back to one parent working with the other staying home to look after the kids, and the gearing up of China as a world super power...
...Sound familiar?
LISTEN: Speaking of psychic predictions, Mia Freedman spoke to Psychic Investigator, Debbie Malone on the No Filter podcast (post continues after audio...)
"Well, I must look like a smart arse because they are fairly accurate but I am a believer in balance," Wilkinson said of his near perfect predictions for life in 2017.
What do you think are going to be the next big things to happen in the next 20 years?
Top Comments
Not even close to "scarily accurate". It said Keating would be PM for a long time (he was voted out less than a year later). It said China would semi-democratise (it hasn't). It said we'd revert to single income households (haha). Islam was a good prediction (though it hasn't turned into a holy war like he predicted) but the rest of it is mix of good guesses and wrong guesses.