In the late 1800s my father's, great uncle emigrated to Cairns. Never to be heard of again.

In 1994, I booked into a hotel in Cairns and the girl on the reception desk said that her mother's maiden name was the same as mine. Turns out that my great great Uncle had established this hotel and it was still owned and run by the family.

Another branch of the family moved to Tarree in NSW.

In the 1950's my Grandmother's sister emigrated to Sydney. By the 1980's her grandchildren had moved to Tarree. One of them is best friends with someone with my surname. Yup, you guessed it, my Mother's niece is now best friends with my father's cousin, on the otherside of the World.

Small World indeed!

Dont worry, when you come on your trip to london,the bars are full of eastern europeans,not a brit in sight

No its not!

I keep seeing people around Brisbane and thinkng, oh my god thats my best friend from Primary School, or thats my first girlfriend, or thats that girl from Uni I shagged once.

And it never is!

And I really have to stop going up to these people and talking to them , cos it sounds like a really lame chat up line.

JTL

2 and a half years ago i went to visit my twin brother in Canberra. About an hour into the journey on the coach from Sydney to Canberra a girl tapped me on the shoulder and said excuse me i saw you at the airport and it has been bugging me since and i have to ask you "are you a Turnbull" she was so shocked when i said yes, it turned out she is the best friend of my twin brothers wife.
I have travelled alot of the world and i have always met up with someone i know or someone who knows someone i know
It is a very small world indeed

John

On my WHV in 1991 I started talking to a girl who was staying in the same backpackers room as me. We vaguely recognised each others name & after going through virtually our entire life history to that point realised we'd been in the same school class when we were 6.

I went on a two week tour in the states and we all had to write our addresses down.... the girl in front wrote the same street in Aberdeen that I was living at, only three doors down and we had never seen each other before! We are still in periodiv contact by email, she lives in New York, I live in Perth.

And a wholesome bunch of salt-of-the-earth people I'm sure they are ... apart from the dole scroungers and the Russian mafia running prostitute rings (I've seen The Bill).

I'll buy a copy of The Daily Mail to get myself up to date with the latest developments.

Reckon i might have the scariest one... just over a year ago i was on honeymoon in a small fishing village in Morocco, tiny place, one of the most relaxed chilled out places you could fine. It was winter, well out of season, hardly any other tourists. So in totally relaxed fashion in that warm honeymoon euphoria we were sitting at a cafe having a drink when who walked by and said hello...... my ex wife

She had decided to just take herself off on a holiday by herself..... In all the bars in all the cities why the hell did she choose that one.. So now we have migrated to Australia to the most isolated city in the world... great choice, should be safe here.

I went home the other day and b**ger me if I didn't just go and bump into my wife in the living room - it's a small world.

(does this thread remind anyone of the 'Letterbocks" page in the Viz magazine?)

you want to be more careful then

julie here,I met a guy in a nightclub very drunk then we bumpd into each other and he asked me out,when we went on the date he told me where he worked,with 30,000 others and i told him the only guy i knew who worked there,turned out to be his best mate who was also my best mates sisters husband,we had been to the same weddings,parties etc for the last 6 years and knew all the same people,when we look at all our pics and videos we are in them with diff partners,very funny,now ofcourse hes my husband.
THEN we went to mexico on honeymoon met a lovely couple only to find out their second name was drennan too,phoned home asked about them and ofcourse its my husbands second cousin,weird.
THEN we moved to oz met lovely couple and when my bro came to visit he got talkin to them only to find out the shop he goes to every morning in scotland is owned by my friends,who live in oz,her mum,he went home to tell her he was in her daughters house in oz, INDEED A SMALL WORLD....

A bloke I used to work with 17 years ago in the UK has just started working for the same company as me over here.

It's a small world.

Was that the doorbell?

Quick.... hide

When my sister moved to San Francisco the first person she saw when she went to buy some food was a guy who lived about 4 doors down from us when we were growing up. In his early 20’s he went AWOL and was never heard from by his distraught family and friends. He knew she recognised him but said nothing. Poor sister had the dilemma of whether to tell his family he was safe etc or respect his wishes that he didn’t want to be found.