SOMETHING TO SAY:?Justin Thorne has recently moved to Collie and hopes to host a weekly social gathering for locals. He will host a social gathering for anyone interested at the Boulevard Cafe today, then every Wednesday from next week from 2-4pm.
CAPTURING THE MOMENT: Justin Thorne, aged 30, when he was in Gibraltar working as a photographer.
PACKING IN: Justin Thorne, aged about 20, backpacking in Jersey off the coast of France on his way to Spain.
FROM backpacking through Europe, diving the world's oceans and drinking with actor Anthony Hopkins, Justin Thorne has just about seen and done it all.
The worldly traveler recently moved to Col lie, bringing with him a mind full of memories and life experiences.
Justin was born just outside of London at the end of World War II.
His father was a barrister and his Scottish mother, who grew up in India, was a spy during the war.
She was imprisoned in a Japanese torture camp and it was during her second attempt at escaping that she met Justin's father.
Justin clearly remembers the physical scars inflicted on his mother, who eventually drank herself to death by the time he was nine.
His grandfather, who was a chief justice, thought Justin's father could do a lot better than marrying a scarred war spy and so disowned him before Justin was born.
After his mother's death, Justin's father moved them to Rho desia, where his life was somewhat like a scene out of the film, To Walk with Lions, Justin said.
Justin's father made it his mission to help black Africans who were being mistreated by the "white man's law".
"He found an interpreter and went out to speak to the villagers and I went with him," Justin said.
"So much adventure and excitement, with elephants and lions and zebras."
As Justin was leaving school, Hastings Banda took over leadership of Nyasaland, now Malawi, so Justin's father's bank accounts were frozen and he was left with only the money in his pockets.
"He had to leave the country," Justin said.
They moved to Du rban in South Africa, but Ju s tin finished boa rding school in Rho desia.
When he finished school Justin started work as a colour photography lab technician.
"The director took me under his wing," Justin said.
Justin wanted to earn a "quick buck", so he left his job at the lab and worked in the Durban docks for about six months.
He remembers clearly witnessing a man getting cut in half by a train.
"Everyone knows you don't walk between the trains when they are shunting," he said.
After he had enough of working in the docks, Justin managed to line up a job through his old lab director working for Kodak in London.
He worked in the laboratory printing pictures of members of the royal family, in particular Princess Margaret.
Justin would not elaborate on what sort of pictures they were, but he said there was always security shadowing his every move to make sure he did not keep any copies of the photos.
His father had already moved to the United States of America and by this stage he was encouraging Justin to follow in his footsteps by going to Cambridge University.
Justin had to do a correspondence course to get in, but instead of spending his time studying, he spent his days drinking with none other than Anthony Hopkins.
Hopkins was not well-known at the time, but he was an understudy to Richard Burton.
"He would go thr o u gh a bottle of vodka in one morning," Justin said.
"I was drinking so much I didn't get any study done."
Justin dabbled in freelance photography, backpacking through Europe before getting a job on a fishing boat in Greece which he hoped would get him to Israel, which always interested him.
Justin volunteered at Kibbutz Ma'agan, on the Sea of Galilee, from 1966.
Unfortunately, the six-day war was fought while Justin was still in Israel and they planned to evacuate all of the volunteers to Turkey and Greece.
"They loaded us into an army truck, but I snuck out and ran to the nearby kibbutz to see my girlfriend," she said.
He only got halfway there before he was stopped by soldiers, but luckily they knew who he was and helped him to get to the other kibbutz.
When he reunited with his girlfriend they had to see out the war locked away in a bomb shelter.
Justin eventually left Israel at the end of 1967 and after a brief trip to England, he got a job as a photographer on board a luxury cruise ship.
"I took the pictures of the people on the Captains table, the rich people," he said.
The pay was good and Justin got to travel to Europe's finest holiday destinations.
His next venture was deep sea diving.
After completing the one-year training, he began working as a mixed gas bell diver.
Most of the dives were around 80 to 100m, but he also did a couple of saturation dives to 150m which involves living in a deep diving decompression chamber at 80 per cent of depth pressure for about a month.
Justin said he was a diver for about five to six years, diving in the Persian Gulf, the North Sea and Spain.
He eventually decided to relocate to Australia, where he began working in Mt Newman and eventually ended up as a private investigator in Perth.
Since moving to Collie he has decided to try and "bring people together".
"There are too many people at my age who are alone," Justin said.
"There is a lot we can do together, we can help each other, the community can help itself. I say lets get together."
Justin said he is hoping to host regular social gatherings for people to get together and share information and life stories.
"Many people have a story, we all have ideas and we don't have to be alone."
Justin will be at the Boulevard Cafe today (Thursday) from 2-4pm, and the same time every Wednesday as of next week.
"Let's get together and meet people," he said.
