The Worldwide
Adventures
(and misadventures)
of
John Courtney Gilpin
There's a race of men who don't fit in,
A race that can't stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and
kin,
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the
flood,
And they climb the mountain's crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
These are the places that I worked during my travels over the world.
Travelled through 64 countries, and worked in 15 of them.
Chapter 1 - Hitchhiking cross Canada, ship to UK, Ireland, Europe,
motorcycle to Scandinavia.
to Ceylon.
Rhodesia, South Africa, motorcycle around South Africa,
working Marine Diamonds, Namibia.
prospecting in Canada, ship to New Zealand.
Indonesia, and Singapore. Camper van trip around Australia.
America, Alaska, North Sea, West Africa, Baja, and Amazon.
Every story has
an earlier history that leads to the events that follow. This is the history
that lead me to the world-wide adventures that follow.
I was born at
Viking, Alberta, Canada in 1939. Raised on a mixed farm, producing grain and
fat cattle. A peaceful life, with lots of good home-grown food, and a safe and
secure community. The sort of off-the-grid, self-sufficient lifestyle that’s
envied these days. Mom grew a huge vegetable garden and preserved much of it
for the long winter. Dad planted an acre of potatoes every spring, and in the
fall we dug up enough to fill the pickup truck to overflowing, which stored
well in the cool dark root cellar under the house and was enough to last all
through the winter and have enough left to replant next spring, so definitely
self-sufficient. Always lots of eggs and meat from the large flock of chickens
feeding on the home-grown wheat and free-ranging the barnyard. In those days
the market couldn’t take all the wheat we could grow, so we also grew oats and
barley and hay to feed the cattle, producing the very best fat steers for the
market. Of course all this diversified farming required constant work to keep
all of it producing properly. Making hay and grain all summer, then feeding it
to the cattle all winter, all without the great labour-saving machinery
available these days. A good healthy lifestyle, but so focused only on that
precious little farm and all the work it demanded….
No TV or internet
those days, and radio severely rationed due to the high cost of batteries for
the old tube-type radio, no grid electricity out there then. Mail delivery once
a week. A small library in town open only Saturdays, but we never went on
Saturdays so no new books….. The stack of old comic books passed on by an uncle
were read and reread to tatters, what a waste of time for a young curious
mind….
So the most
intellectually stimulating activity was school. School was one-room with one
teacher and about 20 pupils in all grades up to year nine. Only five kids in my
grade and the same ones all the way through, so no practice of socializing with
new-comers. I found school easy, and interesting compared to everything else in
my life…. Four miles away, so bikes in summer time and walk part way in the
winter. Walked a trap line for weasels (ermine) in the winter when their coats
were worth something. A bit of pocket money, but such a shame to destroy such
beautiful little animals just to trim the fancy furs of the Queen….
In those days the
local small town was still thriving, and Saturday was late night shopping. So
after the noonday dinner on Saturday, most of the farm families had baths and
put on clean clothes and went to town, to do the weekly shopping and get
whatever spare parts needed, and of course socialize. The town was packed and
lively. When the shopping was finished, the men went to the pool hall or maybe
the beer parlor for a beer or two (but no more than two for most of them), and
the hockey rink or baseball diamond if a game was on. The women and kids went
to the cinema to watch a movie. It was all very sociable, and gossip was kept
up to date.
But my dad was
very much a recluse, and avoided going anywhere or socializing if he could
avoid it. So he went to town on Thursday afternoons when no one else would be
there. We kids were at school so missed out on any chance of socializing with
other kids or access to the library for new books….
Of course sport
was the main social activity for kids in such a country community. But dad put
shit on any sort of sport as a waste of time, so it wasn’t encouraged and never
got a chance to participate. Not that I was much interested anyhow, since I was
much too skinny and lightweight for roughhouse hockey, and found softball way
too boring, and there weren’t any other alternatives available out there… I had
great endurance and could run like a deer for miles so would have been
competitive in marathon, but the school athletics events only had short hard
sprints that didn’t suit my ability, so couldn’t be competitive.
So, besides the
farm work I had to learn to entertain myself with solo activities, such as I
could find, and I got pretty good at that solo lifestyle. Memory holds much of
it to be searching the bush for materials to make bows and arrows, but not much
else…. In the summertime lots of shooting gophers with a .22 rifle. Got paid a
few cents for each tail collected, so was just enough for ammo if the shots
were accurate. The idea was to reduce the gopher population but it didn’t
really make much difference, just a lot of trauma for the poor gopher
families…. In the winter, many hours spent building things with a good big
Meccano set, and of course rereading those comics over and over again…. Not
enough variety for my curious mind so I was very bored…..
This isolated
lifestyle and I probably inherited some of the ‘recluse gene’ from Dad, made me
very much a loner. It sounds counter-intuitive but that was an advantage for
the style of travel that followed. Too shy to get involved with girls so no
entanglements there, and no tendency to hang out with guys, so free to
create my own dreams and make erratic quick decisions or change my mind without
having to negotiate with anyone, and I treasure that freedom. Nearly always
travelled alone; I much prefer it that way. When settling down I attempted several relationships, not because I really wanted to, but everyone else was living that way, so thought I should try it - didn't work out at all - very soon felt irritated and wanted to be on my own again. Still live alone and enjoy it that
way….
That was the most
stable and secure community you could ever have; everyone knew each other and
all cooperated in keeping it relaxed and peaceful, and dull…. The opening lines
from ‘The Hobbit’ come to mind, when Gandalf knocks on Bilbo’s door, looking
for someone to share in adventure. Bilbo replied, “…not here, we’re plain quiet
folk, who have no need of adventures, nasty disturbing things…” My dad made sure that our family life had as
little variety as possible, let alone any hint of ‘adventure’. I well remember
sitting on the tractor all summer, tilling the field alongside the highway, and
watching all the cars and campers going somewhere, anywhere… So I was really
restless and just couldn’t wait to get away….
Shortwave
Radio
In teenage years I
discovered radio and electronics, and that
exactly suited my needs. Luckily I had two uncles who were ham radio operators.
I couldn’t take up ham radio because we didn’t have grid electricity on the
farm to power a transmitter, so I had to stay with receiving only. The uncles
were also part time radio repairman, so I received any radios that were
unrepairable. By studying some handbooks from the 1930’s and a monthly DIY
electronics magazine I had subscribed to, I self-educated a good understanding
of electronics and radio. By scrounging through the discarded radios I was able
to salvage enough components to build a basic but very effective shortwave
receiver for no cost.
For the tech heads, it was a
super-regenerative circuit, using only one Type 30 tube. That tube was as basic
a triode as you can get, and dated from the 1930’s, but by tuning the feedback
exactly to the limit before oscillation, the gain was tremendous. And when
tuned to that peak gain the selectivity was very sharp, so I could pick weak
signals out of the crowded spectrum.. An advantage of being far out in the
country away from the electricity grid meant no electrical interference noise,
especially on dark winter nights with no thunderstorms anywhere. In the winter
the ionosphere causes radio signals reflect back to earth, so stations on the
other side of the world often boom in better than locals.
So I could tune in the whole
world, and that was really exciting for a curious young fella living a dead
boring lifestyle on the farm….. Now I had the whole world at my fingertips .
In those days nearly every country had
shortwave broadcasting services, many had programs in English. BBC World
Service, Voice of America, Radio Australia, Radio Moscow, Radio Nederland,
Deutsche Welle (Germany), All India Radio, Radio Havana Cuba, and so many more.
And of course HCJB ‘Voice of the Andes’ from Quito Ecuador, with it’s
evangelical preaching, and the most powerful signal of all, so I just used it
as a marker to calibrate the fine tuning dial.
When team sport players excel they get
recognition from other players and the audience, but this solo radio activity
was totally isolated from such recognition, so it was a huge thrill to get some
recognition from faraway Australia!
I had done well
at school, so qualified to enter electrical engineering at university, and
looked forward to the new life. First and second year were really interesting,
with lots of courses and lab experiments that had practical application that I
could relate to. But third year got very theoretical. When they started talking
about ‘imaginary numbers’ in waveform analysis, they lost me altogether…. By
then I’d discovered the adventure travel section in the university library, and
just had to get out and do it myself. So I dropped out and thus ended that
career path, and I’ve never regretted it since. Went to work for the local
telephone company to earn enough money to hit the road and seek some real
adventure, and I did find it, as you will see….
Sometimes
it seems that adventurous spirit runs in alternating generations. The Gilpin
family was well established in Ontario, and didn’t need to go pioneering on the
Alberta prairies, but some sort of adventurous spirit made them break away and
endure many hardships and unexpected challenges to go homesteading out west. On
mother’s side, grandfather Heie left Norway to seek economic opportunity, but
as soon as he had established a prosperous farm in Alberta, he left it to his
son and went on his own adventure to set up a tourist camp on a remote lake in
the north woods. In grandpa Gilpin’s stuff I found a book that he must have
ordered from an advert in the back of a magazine – ‘How to Travel Without being
Rich’. He never did any such travel himself, but must have had a stirring of
such restlessness…. But then he got married again in his 70’s and that pretty
much finished him off….
Using Grandad's "How to Travel Without Being Rich" guidebook.
It was a very well researched book, with tips
on how to find passage on freighters, and listings of shipping agents to
contact. And guidance for finding low cost accommodation that locals rather
than tourists would use. It was somewhat like the Lonely Planet of the time,
and gave me lots of information that helped me get started. Then in the
university library I found a book named ‘Walk the Wide World’, by Donald Knies,
1958. He had walked and hitched through 48 countries, as I recall. Well, that
book pretty much finished my already tenuous university ambitions. If he could
do it, so could I, and I couldn’t wait to start. To heck with a planned career;
venture out and see what I can find, and I’m so glad that I did, ‘cause I
wouldn’t have missed it for anything!
So I hit the road, seeking adventure, and found plenty of it as you will see…
I’d been working shift work
as an apprentice at Alberta Government Telephones for too long. The job entailed checking
and maintaining the equipment that shared the conversations on the wires that
carried the long distance communications in those days. Hundreds of those units
that had to be tested and adjusted one at a time so that people could make
clear calls. All the time inside a windowless room, surrounded by such
equipment such as this. Boring repetitive shift work…….
Before we
could pull a piece of equipment we had to listen in on that line to be sure
that it wasn’t in use at the time. That was mostly boring and routine, like a
couple of elderly ladies saying, “…we better hang up now, this must be costing
you a fortune…”, then talking on and on and every so often saying the same
thing again and again, while the meter ticked over….. It seemed that the
telephone company made more money from people saying “…this must be costing a
fortune…” than from real valuable gossip…. But we did pick up an interesting
series of calls one night, when a couple of madams were setting up a brothel in
another city and discussing the business details. The guy who was on the
switchboard plugged this into the speaker system, so we could all hear it as we
went about our boring duties. Apparently it made a click on the line whenever
he monitored it, and the ‘ladies’ realized what was happening and said,
“…There’s that f--ing telephone company again, I hope they get an f--ing
earful…”, and then went on with business….. So much for privacy…..
Of course, my restless
nature couldn’t consider this as a lifetime career, so by living extremely
frugally I’d saved enough out of that apprentice wage to start out on world
travels at last.
Not that I couldn’t have fun while saving, just had to be frugal. I lived in a cheap basement room, and drove a VW bug that got 38 miles per Imp. gallon when fuel cost 38 cents a gallon, so it cost less to be on the road than at the movies.
The rotating shift work
meant that I got four days off every couple of weeks so headed out as far as I
could go in any direction every chance I got. I’d made the passenger seat to
fold down, so I had a comfortable full-length bed, so it was a great travelling
camper. In the winter, by taking a passenger to share costs, and staying at the
youth hostel outside Jasper Park, I could even afford to go skiing.
A very green but eager country boy
I’d bought a second-hand
lady’s backpack, and that turned out to be a good move. It was a lot smaller
than most men’s packs, so when it was filled it didn’t weigh as much. I did
notice that whatever pack someone has will end up full, so the bigger the heavier….
I had to be more selective when packing, and if there was too much stuff then
something had to be left behind. Many times, I was glad for the lighter weight,
and never missed the extra stuff that I could have been carrying all over the
world.
I didn’t want to have a
camera hanging around my neck so went looking for a camera that would fit in my
pocket. In those days, the only ones small enough were ‘half-frame’, so they
took twice as many frames on the same 35mm film. The film and especially the
processing was really expensive in those days, so I was miserly with it, and
thus didn’t take nearly as many photos as I should have. I used slide film, but
that’s really inconvenient to show these days, so I’ve copied the best ones
onto digital. But that original film had been stored 50 years, much of that
time in hot humid tropics while in northern Australia, so many of the photos
have faded and grown strange colored smudges. I’ve tried to re-furbish them as
best I can, but they still show the neglect and look ancient (well they are
pretty ancient…).
One luxury that I did carry
was a tiny Primus stove that my brother had given me for Christmas. When I got
it, I thought it would be just a useless toy, but it was mighty! It roared like
a blowtorch, and ran on any sort of gasoline, from high octane to bad Russian
fuel in Afghanistan. When it needed fuel, I just went to a gas station pump and
drained the little bit that’s always left in the hose, so no cost. I carried a
dry mixture of oatmeal, powdered milk, and sugar, which was light to carry, and
made many a hot porridge on cold mornings when it was really welcome…. Eggs
were available nearly everywhere, and easily boiled for a good source of safe
food.
But do wish I’d started out
with a better sleeping bag, cause I had too many freezing nights…. And some
sort of insulating pad. The blue sleeping pads and the self-inflating
mattresses hadn’t been invented then, and air mattresses were way too heavy and
a nuisance to inflate. I did carry a rolled-up piece of corrugated cardboard
for a while, and that helped a lot. I didn’t carry a tent, only a ground sheet
that kept the damp from underneath and could be wrapped over in case of a
shower or a cold wind. If it really rained, I just got wet and miserable….
By travelling really
frugally, I found that I could travel for about three times as long as I’d
worked, so six months of work gave me a year and a half or more of travel,
pretty good value…. But as you’ll see, I do mean VERY frugally! Riding and
eating and sleeping rough, often in really uncomfortable conditions.... And I
do mean REALLY ROUGH conditions, some nights so cold that I wasn’t sure that I
could last ‘til morning. The body shivers to generate internal warmth, but that
shivering uses up a lot of muscle energy, such that by the wee small hours I
was so exhausted that I could hardly shiver more, and to stop shivering would
be to succumb to hypothermia…. Travelling lite in mostly tropical weather meant
that it didn’t want to lug around cold weather gear, so just toughed it out.
Those days there wasn’t such excellent lightweight warm camp gear available as
now. And often had to eat just whatever was available really cheap. I can
remember once, realizing how extreme I had become, when I found myself haggling
with an Indian over the price for a couple of bananas…..
I recorded costs penny by
penny, and note that I spent a total of only US$19 for one month in India, so
that’s 61 cents a day! Even with difference in value in those days, that’s
cheap…. During the two months in India only paid for a bed once, when caught in
the rain in a small town without a Sikh temple or trucking depot. That was a
very cheap hotel, and the bed was just a charpoy (wooden frame with woven rope
for the bed). A careful look showed hundreds of bedbugs hidden in the rope just
waiting for their meal, so slept on the concrete floor as usual…. That style of
travel wouldn’t suit many people, and even I couldn’t put up with it now, but I
thrived on it in those younger years ….
That was way before plastic
cards, so the usual way to carry funds was in traveller’s cheques. I carried
them in two lots, most with my passport in a bag under my shirt, and $400 for a
last-ditch emergency, hidden in my shorts. That was enough in those days to get
an air ticket back to Canada from wherever, and I’d made a vow that I would
never cut into that fund except to go to where I was sure I could stay and work
for good wages. I’d met too many Aussies who had gone to England and run out of
money, and then found that they couldn’t save enough on the crap wages to get
home again, so were trapped. I never want to be trapped anywhere, must always
have options…. And I also made a vow that I would never ask for money from my
folks for these travels; I had to make it all on my own, and it felt good to
have that independence.
Starting Out –
May 1962
World’s Fair
I first headed for the
Seattle World’s Fair, to get the feel of the road. Easy hitching over to
Vancouver and down to Seattle. Exciting to be on the road!
On the highway down to Seattle, the first frightening ‘adventure’ happened…. Rolling down the interstate in a big Plymouth, I was feeling quite relaxed when the driver suddenly peered at me and said, “…Young man, are you prepared to die??...” Well, that woke me up and caught my attention for sure, and sent a chill up my spine! All sorts of thoughts rushed through my head - what the heck is he planning to do??? He didn’t pull a gun, but was he going to crash the car into one of the concrete abutments flashing by?? I was quickly thinking what to do…. Try to grab the keys, but no that would just guarantee a crash…. Try to hit him longside the head, but no that would be same result for sure…. No seat belts in those days, so I was prepared to dive under the dash board if he looked like crashing the car…. Then he continued, “…Are you prepared to meet the Lord?...” Then he just bashed my ear with Bible preaching for the rest of the trip…. Turns out he was a missionary, just come back from Africa and going to a conference in Seattle to try to raise more money for his ‘work’. He took me to the conference center that was preparing for hundreds of guests for a fund-raising dinner, and arranged for me to get a plate of food from the kitchen. Then arranged a room for me in the dormitory. That all sounds very hospitable, but the way he kept hovering around, a bit too friendly, and telling me to wait there until he finished his speech at the dinner and then he’d “come and visit me”. I was a green country kid, who hadn’t even heard of predatory men, but he made me feel really uncomfortable and wary. So, while they were all at dinner, I climbed over the high fence and jumped down right at a bus stop just as a bus was pulling up. So, jumped in and rode into the city, and found a room in a cheap dosshouse on the ‘wrong’ side of town, full of old winos, and felt safer there…..
Did all the usual World’s
Fair sort of things, went up the ‘Space Needle’, gawked at the impressive
displays, and wore out my feet….
Back to the farm to say goodbye to my folks. Having had that little taste of the road, there’s no way I could stay in that very quiet community. So, I was really restless and just couldn’t wait to get away again, and to be truthful, I never had any intention of going back to stay…. Sad and disappointing for my folks of course, cause there’s no way they could understand why I didn’t want to stay there in that safe and secure spot that they had prepared. And of course, their friends and neighbours made it worse for them when they bragged of what their high-achieving children were accomplishing, and asked what I was doing. “…Oh, he’s hitchhiking somewhere in Africa…” just didn’t get any marks.
So, I got on the
Trans-Canada highway and hitched all the way across the country. Hitchhiking
was easy in those days in a safe country like Canada. I have to admit that I
wasn’t a good hitchhiker… Many stop to pick up a hitchhiker hoping for some
entertaining conversation to help keep them awake. I’m not a good
conversationalist at the best of times, and riding along in a vehicle after
standing out in the weather for hours, just made me very drowsy. More than once
I was dumped out for just dozing instead of chatting….
On the way across the
country I learned about staying at police stations. I was waiting for a lift
just outside to a small town, as it was getting dark a police car pulled up. He
wanted to know who I was and where I was going, and where I was going to stay.
When I said I was probably going to just find a spot under a nearby bridge, he
recommended that I come to the police station. He pointed out that, as a
vagrant, if anything was stolen in town I would be the first handy suspect,
whether I’d done it or not. If I stayed at the station then I’d be safe and
secure, and not suspect. I had to stay up and visit with him half the night
when he wasn’t out on patrol, but then at least I had a safe dry bed and a real
good alibi. He gave me breakfast in the morning and recommended that I try to
stay at other police stations along the way, which I did in many places as far
away as South Africa.
There weren’t any
backpacker hostels in those days, and I never felt comfortable in YMCA’s with
all those young men a bit too friendly…, so often slept at Salvation Army men’s
refuges when in big cities. At most such refuges had to sleep in a big
dormitory with coughing and sometimes raving and screaming alcoholics going
through deliriums. Bad atmosphere but very low cost or free.
It was at a refuge in
Montreal that I met an old alcoholic who had the air of a gentleman when he was
sober. He was always better dressed than most, and turns out he had been well
educated and good career until the bottle got him, but he still had enough
control to not end up in the gutter like most others. One tip he gave me -
always make sure you have enough money hidden away to get yourself a haircut, a
new shirt, new trousers, and most important, a new pair of shoes, even if cheap
ones, but they must be new. I didn’t make much of it at the time, but much
later on I remembered it just when I really needed it, as you will see…..
Go to first Chapter 1
