Yesterday I picked up a hitchhiker at Pambula. He was headed to Eden, so we had a chat on the way, and he told me a great local story about himself. I wish I had asked his name and got a photo of him for you. He is probably about 60, very tall and slim, healthy looking with long grey hair and beard.
This man says he loves walking, so the distance from Pambula to Eden was not a worry to him, though it takes 10 to 15 minutes by car...
30 years ago, he was helping to unload tuna off a fishing boat. The tuna is packed in ice, and somehow he froze both his feet, way beyond the stage of mere frostbite. He ended up in a hospital in Sydney for 3 weeks, and at the end of that time, the doctors were going to operate and remove both his feet. He spent the night before the operation wide awake, thinking about what he was going to do, and realizing that despite his love of walking he would never walk again after that.
In the morning when the hospital staff came to do the pre-op on him, he was sitting in a chair next to his bed, fully dressed. They asked where the bloke in the bed was, and he told them "he's gone down the hall". When they went looking, he made his escape!
Obviously he made the right decision!
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