It was with sadness that I heard about the passing of Alfred, a great walker.
He was, perhaps, after Petria Thomas, one of Mullumbimby’s greatest athletes.
The distance he covered every day, and sometimes night, come rain or shine, and often wearing his black garbage bag coat, was incredible evidence of his sheer endurance and stamina.
A truly unique Byron Shire resident, we all worried if we hadn’t seen him for a while.
I often wondered what was going on in the mind of this enigma that no-one seemed to know much about.
Nonetheless, he won the hearts of our community, and there were campaigns to watch out for him as his habit of walking on the road was always dicey.
He probably made us slow down more than anything. There is an outpouring of compassion for the woman who hit him, probably because everyone is so relieved it wasn’t them.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
