Stories from life…
Runaways: a saga of escape and recapture
This is a true story from a time now several decades gone. I have changed the names to hide the identities. The descriptions of the characters are authentic. Some of the situations are reconstructions.
IT’S COMPLICATED. No, it’s simple. Which it is depends on who you are.
Who you are. The who are Jane and Terry. Oh, yes, there’s their partners although they play a secondary role in what is about to happen.
Jane is a slim, petite blonde woman in her mid-thirties. Quietly spoken and attractive, she is married to Andrew, the outdoor education instructor at a prominent private school. They and their two children live in a large suburban house close by. Their’s is the secure and comfortable life of a middle class family. Until it isn’t.
Terry is something of a footloose character whose working life spans short term roles as surveying assistant and as a diver who inspects wharves for the state maritime authority. Around average height, with his blonde hair starting to thin, the trim build of someone who spends much time outdoors and a way of speaking that makes him likeable and convincing, he is married to Denice, a primary school teacher who has a steady job and who is the financial mainstay of the family. They, their young daughter and large dog live in the riverside village of Stony Beach just off the West Tamar Highway. Another content middle class family. Until it isn’t.
The families know each other, however the complicating factor with these two middle class families is the liaison Jane and Terry had a few years ago. That went on for a good six months before Denice, discovered it. It wouldn’t be the last such liaison that would come to Denice’s attention.
Launceston is a small city in which news moves rapidly through social networks. Something seen by someone, such as Jane and Terry looking like they are something more than just friends, would propagate from node to node through the network and sooner or later reach the ears of those most affected. That is how Denice learned of Terry and Jane.
The relationship ended. Denice never again fully trusted Terry. She kept a wary eye on him.
Life went on. Jane continued in her role as housewife. Terry continued his life of sporadic work. Denice taught school. Andrew never learned of his wife’s liaison.
Have you seen Terry? Have they been delayed? That is what Denice asks his friends after he doesn’t come home from hiking in the mountains with them.
Hike? We never went on any hike in the mountains, they tell her.
Where, then, is Terry?
Denice phones around. Eventually, she calls Andrew. I don’t know where Terry is, he tells Denice, but have you seen Jane?
Unable to help Andrew, Denice hangs up as reality dawns and she realises where both Jane and Terry are. Well, not where they are but why they have not come home. She lifts the phone again, dials Andrew’s number and tells him the whole sorry story.
Andrew spends a confused night on the edge of despair as his comfortable middle class life falls into the abyss. Denice calls it a night, pours a full glass of red wine and goes to bed. She is coping better than Andrew. She has been here before.
Reaching the Central Plateau, Terry turns onto a bumpy secondary road, drives some kilometres and parks where the road ends. Darkness is upon them by the time they finish pitching the hiking tent on the shore of a small lake. The location is one of a number of secluded places Terry knows of thanks to his extensive travels in Tasmania’s backblocks.
With their spouses in a state of anxiety, Jane and Terry stay in their camp for the next day and night. On the morning of the third day the food they brought with them is running low. It is time to drive on. There’s a supermarket in Queenstown, Terry reassures Jane.
The escape from their partners and their domestic lives followed a southwestward trend after leaving Launceston as they ascended the winding road that took them onto the plateau and across to the lake that was their first night’s campsite. Now it was westward that the two drive in the little Toyota, one of the two cars Jane’s family owns.
So it goes for the next week as Jane and Terry elope. They set up camp at Trial Harbour but retreat for a more sheltered location after a westerly blows in strong and cold. Another night they spend at a rough camping area in the trees beside a vast field of sand dunes. Then they head north to another secluded campsite out on the coast from Marrawah.
Realising that the couple have eloped brings a strange calmness to Denice and Andrew. Their partners might have run away from home but at least they know they are safe, somewhere. They meet at Andrew’s house and try to make sense of it all. Should they now consider their spouses their ex-spouses? Both make phone calls to people they know across the state, all to no avail. Nobody had seen Jane or Terry.
That—the possibility of discovery—was why Jane and Terry chose secluded campsites to secrete themselves in. Terry had cultivated friendships across the state, but now they could turn to their disadvantage if those friends were to see them. Best to avoid people we know, Terry had earlier suggested to Jane.
It was a Saturday that the two set off on their amourous adventure. It is Sunday a week later that they run out of money. It is now apparent — the elopement was poorly planned.
The reality was that there had been little planning at all. Terry had never been one to plan ahead. He was given to spontaneity, to decisions in the moment. His was a day-by-day sort of life. Jane was a little more thoughtful of the future but she was not one who would turn up an opportunity when it came up — like eloping with Terry. That had been planned, no, not planned, more an idea cooked up a few days before their hasty disappearance, and then acted on in the moment. A decision made on a whim, their planning consisted of their tossing a few clothes, an inadequate supply of food and a pack each of bushwalking equipment into the boot of Jane’s car and driving off.
It was on reaching Penguin that they realise they are running short of money. Terry thought Jane had been to the bank before they left and had brought a wad of cash with her. He didn’t have a wad of cash to bring. Jane hadn’t thought of money at all. All she had was a few tens of dollars in her purse. Neither thought of bringing their bank books to get additional funds.
Around ten in the evening Jane drives into Stony Beach and drops Terry at his house. Then she drives home with the petrol tank a notch above empty to where a distraught Andrew awaits for word of his errant wife.
