ONE of Frankston’s most colourful personalities at the turn of last century was an unlikely celebrity who sought obscurity in a hermit’s existence. According to stories circulating at the time, his exile was a self-imposed penance for sins committed during his wayward youth. But this did not stop people from all over Melbourne seeking him out and dining out on stories of having met the “Frankston Hermit”, as he became known. One has to wonder if the hermit was entirely genuine in his desire for solitude; his camp on the foreshore between Frankston and Carrum was not especially hard to…