Chance meetings in Australia

I have had several chance meetings whilst in Australia. Here are two of them. Whilst on a road trip from Melbourne to Cairns via Sydney and the east coast, a distance of 2500 miles, we went for a drink in The Hard Rock Cafe in Surfers Paradise. As we were walking down the stairs to leave, somebody called my name. I turned around to see the son of a friends brother-in-law. I had only met him once before at a barbeque and I didn't recognise him at first but he remembered me. The other occurance was about five months later in Cairns where we had been living for that period. We went to a mexican restaurant with some Australian friends for the first and only time and whilst we were there I noticed a guy kept looking at me. I thought it a little strange but dismissed it. Three months later, back in the UK, I met an old friend for a drink and he told me a friend of his, whom he had brought around to my house once briefly, had seen me in Cairns in that restaurant but I didn't acnowledge him. It was the same guy ! I have had several other similar encounters on Australian trips, in such a large country it seems overly coincidental, these two encounters happened in 2003 but I have had experiences like them in Australia since I first holidayed there in 1988