Back in Jan, 1980, I was going camping with a mate, Don..a fellow Spitfire owner in the same car club. He had a school friend who wanted to come too and I had a spare passenger seat. We went to the Cathedral Ranges [in Victoria] and amongst other things I tore off my exhaust pipe on a dry creek bed...[don't ask, but Bruce would die]. We made camp, I wired the exhaust back on [sort of]...and that afternoon we took off on a one hour 'walk' [to the tune of 'three hour cruise'].
To our eternal amusement, this was more accurately described as a 6 hour trek. I decided then to kill the guy who suggested this walk.
Night fell, and we were lost in rugged mountain terrain where one wrong step and snap goes your leg.
Terry [now my wife] was faint and had to be helped/supported.
I plotted creative methods of extermination.....Bruce would die with style.
I decided it was too dark and dangerous to continue, since we could only guess which way to go...[Bruce had led us off-track as well.....castration was looking good].
Fortunately for us all, I smoked and had matches with me, so I lit a small fire to keep warm with till daybreak.
So there we were, Terry and I, 'sleeping' together just hours after meeting....[actually, I was looking at options for post-castration....knee-capping or bamboo under fingers...ah, decisions, decisions].
Just as it became light, a car drove past on the other side of the valley....we'd been sleeping just 100 yards from the road we had set out on.
We got back to camp early and I cooked cheese and onion omelettes...and had a beer or ten.
Getting back to her place, in a car with a noisy exhaust. I asked Terry, if, after all the dramas of the weekend [like almost perishing on a mountain side], she wouldn't be against doing something a little less dramatic like going to the Drive-In.
She said yes. Silly girl [that was her chance to escape], we got married in June, '82 and are, still...
Dunno what happened to Bruce....my guess is that someone actually finalised extermination methods and acted on them, too...