It's a small world...
 

I am in the process throwing a website together for a client and I was sent a photograph of someone for a biography page. The photo was taken by none other than Alfresco of this parish and it was lovely to connect with him in another life, as it were.

Has anyone else met a fellow BE member by accident?

Re: It's a small world...
 

It seems not, Don. However, your title was a general one, and the topic is an interesting one. Here's an experience of mine.

Stepping down off the coach that took me from Southampton to London on my first visit to England many years ago, the very first person I saw in the street was an old chum from my boarding school nine years before. That was a small-world incident.

And this for a follow-up. Graham and I hung around together in Kangaroo Valley off and on that winter, then went our separate ways to go travelling. He hooked up with a Japanese fellow and they hitched their way east towards Japan. I wended my way by car down as far as Ankara, then hitched into Iran with a girl I'd picked up at a Youth Hostel in Greece. In Esfahan, we bumped into Graham and his mate. How's that for a small world!

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I meant to say this before, Don: I used to be reasonably familiar with Carindale. Grandparents lived in Coorparoo, I went to boarding school in East Brisbane, have friends in Mt Gravatt from my days in the Young Liberals many years ago, and my Dad was cremated in Mt Gravatt too. Does all this qualify as a "small world" coincidence? Nah, probably not! Never mind.

Re: It's a small world...
 

I'm going to have to change my user name as, for some reason, people seem to think I'm called Don! (It's a long story)

I've only been in Carindale for three years having spent 14 years in the States and 39 in England. Sal and I like it here but, as soon as the children are old enough, we're leaving home to buy a few acres in northern NSW and go off the grid, possibly in a home made house with every energy making and saving device known to mankind.

In the mean time we are having a bash at 'The Good Life' in suburbia by trying to be a little more self sufficient.

Anyway, I know that I have a really good story like yours about meeting someone somewhere but I am buggered if I can remember it! Maybe I should start a thread about shit that I have forgotten....

All the best,

Dave :)

Re: It's a small world...
 

No, just that I was asleep and haven't seen the post till now!

Many moons ago I met Wol & Mrs Wol at a couple of BE meet in Brighotn, before either of us had got visas.
Then on my last day at work before emigrating they turned up in the office to get their fingerprints taken for an FBI check for their Aussie visas - they hadn't realised I worked there and as their real names were on the appointments book, not the names I knew them by, it was rather a surprise :lol:

Re: It's a small world...
 

Churchie boy?

Re: It's a small world...
 

I was at a football training session in Melb. s.e. suburbs for my son last season; I got talking to this chap whose son was new to the team and it was immediately apparent that he was a Pom from the 'sarf' of England. It transpires that he went to my secondary school and sixth-form college, in the year below me in Horsham, West Sussex...to say that we were both surprised is an understatement. He brought along the whole school sixth-form photo the next week and there we were. He lived about 2 km's from me and I didn't know him at the time.

Re: It's a small world...
 

Yes indeed, Kim. A long time ago - Class of '56, which I find hard to believe myself! I boarded there for six years, from the age of eleven. It was the only option, when my two classmates and I became too old for the little bush school. (See separate thread.) Do you know anybody who might have been there at that time?

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As a student I worked for Camp America- way out in a sparsely populated American area. My camp was run by a witch of a woman.
However I met someone there who became my closest friend, so silver lining and all that...

Years later...good mate was leaving his job working in a small UK council, in some peculiar department - pig licencing or something.
His replacement? The son of witch woman who owned the camp at which we met. We hated the son too- so very uncomfortable 2 week job handover for my good mate.

Re: It's a small world...
 

No, I'm a Perth girl and that was a few years before I was even born. Know lots of current Churchie kids and until recently I lived in Coorparoo.

Re: It's a small world...
 

I think the girl in those photos makes it an even smaller world, when she went to Alfresco for those photos, she didn't know he and I knew each other, but she had been my daughter's singing teacher.

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Before we emigrated, I used to bug this aussie girl in my accounts department with loads of questions about Australia. She then left the company to return home long before we left England, and I had no idea where in Australia she had gone to.

When we arrived in our new rental in Melbourne, I discovered she lived 9 doors away.

BB

Re: It's a small world...
 

And amazingly that photo shoot I did was an enquiry through my website out of the blue. When I told Kim I was doing that photo shoot, she told me that she was her daughter's singing teacher a few years back! :blink:

And then for photos to end up in your mailbox was amazing.

Small world indeed.

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Daughter came home from work this evening saying she'd been chatting to a customer who was English. He'd done the usual - whereabouts are you from, Hertfordshire? Ahh know it well, what town? Daughter told him, he said he knew it, he'd had his car fixed there once years back. Daughter asked him which garage and it was the one my husband used to work in, small place so chances are is was him who fixed the car.

Re: It's a small world...
 

And there's this, for the small-world thread...

Two men were sitting next to each other at a bar in New York. After a while, one guy looks at the other and says, "I can't help but think, from your accent, that you're from Ireland." The other guy responds proudly, "Yes, that I am!"

The first guy says, "So am I! And from whereabouts in Ireland might you be?" The other guy answers, "I'm from Dublin, I am."

The first guy responds, "Sure and begorra, and so am I! And what street did you live on in Dublin?" The other guy says, "A lovely little area it was, I lived on McCleary Street in the old central part of town."

The first guy says, "Faith & it's a small world; so did I! And to what school would you have been going?" The other guy answers, "Well now, I went to St. Mary's of course."

The first guy gets really excited, and says, "And so did I. Tell me, what year did you graduate?" The other guy answers, "Well, now, I graduated in 1964."

The first guy exclaims, "The Good Lord must be smiling down upon us! I can hardly believe our good luck at winding up in the same bar tonight. Can you believe it, I graduated from St. Mary's in 1964 my own self."

About this time, another guy walks into the bar, sits down, and orders a beer. The bartender walks over shaking his head & mutters, "It's going to be a long night tonight."

The guy asks, "Why do you say that?"

"The bloody O'Malley twins are drunk again."

Re: It's a small world...
 

Heard about a British butcher in the small hinterland town Cooroy Qld.

Went out for a drive and called in, the Butcher had a Midlands accent so we asked where was he from. Needless to say he had been the butcher from our Nottingham village and gone to the same school as my sons and knew one of them.

Re: It's a small world...
 

:rofl:

Re: It's a small world...
 

When i first joined this site years ago i encountered another member on here already living in Australia who was originally from the same village as myself.At the time i did not know this person and it turned out he went to school with my partner and my sister and his sister lived across the road from us !:blink:

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Do you have a twin brother? ;)

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When we lived in Vila in the New Hebrides (now Port Vila, Vanuatu) in the South Pacific, in the '70s, my wife had a job meeting people off the planes each day and trying to sell them bus tours. One day a pair of backpackers asked her if she could recommend a cheap place to stay. She took pity on them and invited them home to our little apartment. While chatting, she and the girl realised that they had been at the same church-camp outside Melbourne at the age of 15. Small world!

When I arrived home from work I was introduced to the pair, and the Canadian boyfriend's name rang a faint bell with me. Had we met somewhere along the road in Europe? Indeed we had. He was part of a group from the Youth Hostel in Thessaloniki (Greece) nine years before, that decided to go to the local cinema to watch "Zorba the Greek". An even smaller world! (One of the Australian girls in the group hitched a ride with me next morning, and we travelled together for several months through the Middle East and parts of the Soviet Empire. And married in Toronto a couple of years later.)

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So, Sal and I rented a house in Carindale for a year and a half and then managed to purchase the house next door where we are living now. The rental house was empty for a bit and we would pop next door and check for our mail. The new tenant got his first piece of mail and Sal said "that's funny, I used to go to school in Kyogle with a boy called A.B."

Incredibly, A.B. was in a relationship with another girl that Sal went to school with and they both moved in next door to us. He moved from Townsville and she from Dubbo. Hell of a coincidence.

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Both my uncles seem to have the small world thing going.

About 2 year ago I met an Australian girl in a bar in the UK. We got chatting and she told me she was touring the UK. It turned out she lived on the next street from my Uncle in Brisbane.

My Uncle who lives in the UK went on holiday to Sydney about 10 years ago. He bumped into (literally!) a fellow member of his church choir on the street. None of them knew each other was even on holiday!

My AU Uncle used to own a business in the Seychelles with a fellow British expat. They both left the Seychelles and lost contact. Many years later my UK Uncle went to a pub whilst on holiday in Jersey and spotted the picture of the business on the wall. After he made enquirers it turned out the landlord was my AU Uncles business partner.

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Another small-world incident from my time in the New Hebrides,now Vanuatu... One evening I was waiting in a hotel lobby in Vila (the main town) for a visiting client to come down and be taken out to dinner. Being early, I wandered over and was idly reading the bulletin-board. A voice from behind me said, "Gordon?" It was a Canadian chap that I used to work with in Nassau, Bahamas, two or three years before. While I was still there, he had moved to a job in Buenos Aires, and just happened (for some reason I've forgotten now) to have a one-night stopover in Vila. He had recognised me by my bald spot!

Re: It's a small world...
 

And there you wuz, with a glass in your hand - normal day at the police office?

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My mum's Irish - grew up in County Clare. She moved to Salford as a young girl with her mum and then to Bolton, where she met my dad. They moved south to North Hertfordshire and had a family, including me. 20 years later I move to Bath to work for a publishing company and, since many of the people I work with are stiffs, I work in a pub for beer. While there I meet a girl and two years later we move in together. Five years after that we decide to get married and all the rellies are invited along, including my soon-to-be-wife's sister and her husband. At the reception my mother gets talking to the sister-in-law's husband and it turns out his mum's Irish too. She asks where from. Guess what - same county. Asks which town. Guess what - same town. Asks what the mother's name is. Guess what - she was my mum's best friend for 20 years before she moved to England. Hadn't heard from her in 40 years or so. They got back in touch and remained in contact until she (the brother in law's mum) died a few years later.

Also. I was lucky enough to spend a semester at college in upstate New York. I was on the back seat of a greyhound bus at the end of my trip and got talking to the girl in the seat in front. Turned out we grew up three doors down from each other - she was a couple of years behind me in school - went to the same primary school and the same secondary.

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On Concorde, you used to be able fly to New York in hours and get there before you left which tells me this planet of ours ain't as big as people make it out to be. Ahem.

I once met Barry Norman on a cross-channel ferry but as I had never met him personally before it was probably nothing special. I've also met various VIPs but seeing as we were at the same event : nothing doing...

I'll try harder. Years ago, I sailed around the Caribbean on a little yacht belonging to a retired General with an assortment of crew and then 6 months later, whilst stopping at a servo for a Mars Bar on an English A road bumped in to one of the blokes also present.

When I arrived in Sydney I was jogging between Bondi and Bronte when someone called me. An old mate from London. Not a Pom tourist so perhaps a bit less chancy...you'd expect to meet people on Bondi...

Re: It's a small world...
 

I've got some unusual experiences as well:

1 My wife when she was single went out to Melbourne for 2 years to teach from Scotland (that's how we met in the same tennis club but that's another experience!) The plane touched down in Sydney en-route and as she was walking down the stairs of the plane someone called her name. It turned out that the 1st person she spoke to in Oz was her next door neighbour from her small village in Scotland who she hadn't seen for 15 years and had lost contact with (he was working at Sydney airport and had emigrated).

2 Friends of ours have a son who emigrated to NZ. He is now CEO of one of the largest NZ construction companies working on the rebuilding of Christchurch. When he went to Christchurch to speak to the head of the government department co-ordinating the project he noticed she had a Scottish accent and asked where she came from. They were 5 or 6 years apart and it turned out they both came from the small Scottish town where we live, they both went to the same school and I taught both of them!!