Day 363 | Some Cairns backpacker: the people you meet
rest day
I’ve met plenty of characters in my time on the road: that guy in a cold Bridgetown forest; Chris and Harry in Esperance; the Roger Daltry look alike in the Keep River National Park and Klaus the Camel Man the next day.
A few who rival Pat.
He was passing through Cairns, why? the reason takes up most of this episode, they must have decided to bundle the old guys together.
He came down from somewhere near Cape Tribulation where he had a creek front home, I suspect probably closer to a shack than a house. On the pension he had saved enough to have a holiday, he was off to the Philippines.
Err, why?
Well, he had another house there, he’d go over for a few weeks from time to time, just to hang out, a change of scene.
He’d driven down, usually he took the longer but quicker sealed inland road but this time he wanted to see a bridge on the Bloomfield Track that’s been opened recently, not a good move, the road is bad in places, actually it’s the unsealed coast road that I’m going up next week.
I couldn’t guess his age, maybe early 70s, he had a cheeky disposition, real cheery and an endearing twinkle in his eye. Basically a shit stirrer, but with a good heart, didn’t have a bad word to say about anyone or anything but not without opinions strongly held: people should enjoy life more, eat a bit less, etc.
He had a 2 litre plastic bottle, recycled from fruit juice I guess, filled with what looked like raspberry juice.
What’s with the used engine oil, I asked.
Port, mostly water, just liked the taste and drinking slowly.
I gracefully declined a swig.
(This backpackers is great clean accommodations, the best I’ve stayed at in my travels, with usually friendly faces, a bit out of town and more expensive due to not being packed in as usual. The cost and distance from town keeps the usual rowdy types away. Everyone is unusually polite.)
We both liked a chat, laying in our beds, the third vacant for the evening, Pat asking questions about my trip, intrigued, and slowly revealing the reasons for his, grinning broadly.
He was off to see his girlfriend, he’d bought her a house, not a huge investment at $5000. He’d met Norah on a bus, or in a cafe when he visited a few years ago.
He’d stayed a few times, 3 months the last, it’d got a bit much but every time he mentioned departure Norah had become distraught. This time he was going to say right from the start he was there for 3 weeks and show her the ticket. You can have too much of a good thing. He was frugal with the cash, he named a daily budget in pesos, that he dispensed to pay for everything, she would go off and organise it all, but the pesos meant nothing to me.
Basically she was just a bit clingy, he preferred some distance. Her English was good although they didn’t have a heap to converse about beyond the immediate requirements of the day, what’s for dinner type questions. She did everything, cooking, cleaning, washing clothes quite cheerily, at 34 she was now unlikely to get married.
Pat’s major fear was Norah examining his passport and discovering that he’d been over since the last time he saw her, spending time with another woman he’d met on a bus or in a cafe.
It was starting to get complicated, he was going to buy the second woman a house as well.
Pat enjoyed laying it all out, laughing at the ridiculousness of it all at his age, he had 5 adult children here, maybe adult grandchildren, and now was getting into trouble overseas, but he knew that he had a fallback position, the Philippinas could never come to Australia.
In the meantime he’d been having an affair with a Vietnamese woman who lived locally and wasn’t getting on with her husband, he had recently found out and punched Pat in the face giving him a huge black eye he had worn with pride. Thought he probably deserved it.
The stories went on into the night, past midnight. I asked him how he was getting to the airport. I love walking, I’ll walk there. Oh, I thought, that’s at least 5 km from here. But he’ll drop the bags off first, then leave the 4WD out the front of the backpackers for the 3 weeks.
In the end I just had to ask him, politely, but directly, how old are you?
85.
Hunh? You ain’t pulling my leg.
Swore he wasn’t.
Gee, if I had his get up and go at his age I will have had a great life.
Lively, funny, enjoying life.
I do meet ‘em.