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A Quest

Just a nice story.

One man's quest to find Aberdeen - all 34 of them

JIM MCBETH

IT WAS a throwaway line by a television reporter in Hong Kong, there to witness Britain handing over the colony to China, that crystallised a thought in Aberdeen-born Fred Bull’s mind.

The reporter said: "I am in Aberdeen, Hong Kong!"

Mr Bull, now 67, said: "Home was occupying my mind and it made me wonder how many places bore the name."

The thought became a ten-year mission to locate and visit each place that had the North-east port as its namesake.

The result, a DVD documentary and a book Aberdeens Around the World, is to be published in June. It records a 96,000-mile odyssey predicated on an idea, the legacy of which will last far longer than Mr Bull. From his home near Aboyne, Mr Bull said: "It has taken on its own life."

A decade ago, Mr Bull began with eight Aberdeens and after research compiled a list of 34, only two of which he has not visited. The Aberdeens of Guyana, in South America, and Sierra Leone, in Africa, remain out of bounds because of unrest and war.

In the United States alone, Mr Bull visited 12 Aberdeens and one in Nova Scotia, Canada.

The most remote Aberdeen is on the South Andaman island, 1,000 miles off the east coast of India, and founded by the Earl of Aberdeen in Victoria’s reign. The oldest, outside Scotland, is in New Jersey, founded in 1685.

One Aberdeen Mr Bull finds poignant is a suburb of Freetown, the Sierra Leone capital.

"It was named by a North-east skipper who was returning freed slaves to their home."

In Kentucky, Mr Bull met a man who asked him where he was from. "I said Aberdeen, and he replied, ‘No, you don’t, I know everyone, there.’

"I said I was from Aberdeen, Scotland, and he said, ‘There’s another Aberdeen?’"

Posted by Ithildin at June 7, 2004 5:15 PM | PROCURE FINE OLD WORLD ABSINTHE