Quite some years ago, in 2004 in fact, as I was listening to Radio National (which I do every night as I'm an incurable insomniac), I came across a segment called VERBATIM, in which the interviewer talked with a 92-year-old chap called Bill who has had an obsession with wheels all his long life.
The power of the engine didn't matter; whether it was trucks, bicycles or battered old 2CV Citroens, Bill had travelled Australia from end to end on all of them. Most of his travelling had been done in pursuit of work (and girlfriends) and his was the story of a labouring man with a taste for adventure and no desire to settle down.
For Bill, there had always been another river to ford or a python to wrestle or a murderer to evade ... and suddenly I realised that I knew that chap: he was Bill Skinner whom I had befriended back in 1977 when I lived on Thursday Island. Bill had driven an old truck up to Cape York and, daunted by the prospect of driving down that same rough road again, had come across to Thursday Island to book himself, his three dogs, and his truck onto the barge returning to Cairns in a few days' time. He had missed the boat going back to Bamaga and wandered the main street of TI aimlessly when we ran into each other. I invited him to stay at my house for the night and we talked and talked (and drank and drank!) well into the night.
We met again in 1979 when I overnighted at the Great Northern Hotel in Cairns on my way to a job interview on Mornington Island. Bill lived in Cairns at the time and I went to his house in Severin Street. His backyard was a junkyard! It was full of old things which Bill had kept or collected under some "it-may-come-in-handy-one-day" compulsion. To make even more room for all the junk, Bill had removed the clothes hoist to the top of the roof! Wash-day at Bill's must've been quite a thing to behold! He'd just "tarred" his unregistered WWII Willys Jeep in black paint all over as he was about to go on another trip somewhere. He only told me about it during a mad midnight dash to the local cemetery to dig up some soil for his garden - another typical Bill-escapade! - and the black tar spots stayed on my trousers for a long time!
In 1981, while I was in Melbourne working for Fluor Corporation and living at the Majestic Private Hotel in St Kilda, his daughter Roslyn and her husband dropped in, and visited me again after I had moved to Magnetic Island in the same year. I left Magnetic Island shortly afterwards for Papua New Guinea, Saudi Arabia, Greece, et al, but not so Roslyn who must have stayed on "Maggie" because I ran into her again inside the Picnic Bay Hotel when I briefly returned to the island in 1985. Later still, she must've been joined by her father because, according to this article, he celebrated his 100th birthday on the island in 2012.
I had lost touch with Bill quite some time before then, and even though he was as tough as old boot leather, I doubt he'd still be around to celebrate his 108th birthday this year. At the time his story went to air, I not only saved the above sound file but also wrote a short note to his address in Longwarry in Victoria. I didn't have to wait long for his reply. While he admitted that his memory was no longer what it used to be, he remembered his trip to TI and our meeting and, as he put it, "if I can find Nelligen on the map, I'll drop in some day." and, "I could easily drive up there, but thieves are everywhere here now and very cunny [sic]" and "I camp in a caravan every night hoping to catch the thieves - with a 3-inch piece of pipe!!!" It sounded just like the old Bill Skinner!
