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Two stories today.

Newly Overhauled Engine Fails at Nagambie. (Sometime in the mid eighties.)

I had taken my radial Airtractor 301 to Melbourne for an engine overhaul. It was ready to be picked up so I had my friend Peter Menhennit fly me down in my Cessna 180 to collect it.
We were returning home, flying in loose formation and the new engine started to surge. I had experienced this years ago and knew it was metal particles upsetting the prop governor. The engine was breaking up. Fortunately I had crossed the hilly and timbered country and now was in a cropping and grazing area. I made a decent to a farm track and landed. Peter wondered why I was “wasting time when daylight was closing in” and continued onwards. I watched my aeroplane disappear and could do nothing about it. Here I was far from home, nowhere to stay the night and no wallet nor money.
Now to cut to the chase. A motorist gave me a lift to the parents of a farming client I had at home. It was well and truly pitch now and the lady of the house was most reluctant to open her door. She called her husband John and shortly I was admitted and treated with the greatest of hospitality.
Over dinner we talked about the incident and the predicament I was in with no cash on my person. Well it was simply a retrieval exercise I explained.
Now here comes the punch line.
The lady says “so you went to Melbourne without any money?”
“Who do youthink you are? Royalty?”.
I laugh about that when I recall the incident. Not only the question but the enquiring way she said it.