ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
A Jetstar pilot has gone through the motions of his layover routine in Launceston yesterday evening, landing Flight JQ715 from Melbourne before trudging off the tarmac, onto the minibus, check in at the Mercure, door open, tie off, hat off, sit on toilet, kick shoes off, open Tinder, sighing deeply, think about going downstairs for a drink, deciding not to then heading straight to bed.
FO Bryce Denholm, 27, touched down just after 8:20pm, wheeled his overnight bag into the city’ premiere transit hotel and opened the dating app out of pure muscle memory.
What greeted him was a familiar face.
“There she is,” he said, lying flat on the bed in the dark.
“The Jeep lady.”
That woman is Karen*, 48, smoker, social drinker, from Longford, has held her spot at the top of the Tinder deck in northern Tasmania for the better part of half a decade. Her bio references her three adult children, two marriages (one open, open closed), and her favourite passenger, Quinton Quacks, an oversized, bean-filled duckling she rescued from a park bench in Evandale in 2017.
Karen’s main profile photo shows her sitting in the driver’s seat of a lifted Jeep Patriot, smiling under a trilby and wearing a shirt brighter than welding flash. Quinton is buckled into the front passenger seat, wearing nothing but a seatbelt.
“I matched with her once by accident,” Denholm continued.
He’s now smoking a cigarette in the bathroom with the hot shower pouring and exhaust fan screaming.
“She messaged first. Said she had Bundy cans in the fridge and a heated spa if I was keen. I was not keen. I actually love coming down here, great airport.”
More to come.
