'Legendary' Aussies create 'best ever' Google Maps photos
The South Australian stunt has been widely hailed online after the photos were recently uploaded.
When Bruce was suddenly told to run down the street by his mate, the confused South Australian had no idea what was going on.
"You'll see in a couple of months, now run!" his friend Smiley barked at him. Bruce duly followed his orders and in doing so, created what has been dubbed one of the greatest images in Google Maps' vast catalogue of roadside stills.
It came about after Meningie resident Smiley had spotted an approaching Google Street View car while working under the bonnet of his car last September. It came just a week after his teenage daughter had seen the vehicle in a neighbouring town and told her father she was desperate to "stage a scene" and be captured by its camera.
"The chances of it happening are pretty slim and I explained to her that she would need to be in the right place at the right time," Smiley told Yahoo News Australia.
But that's the exact situation he found himself in days later, and wasting no time, Smiley jumped up with a plan. Sticking on a balaclava and grabbing a nearby axe from his tools, Smiley, in just a singlet, pants and a pair of thongs, shouted over to Bruce to start running as the car began to pass.
In the hilarious photos the pair can be seen running down the suburban street with Smiley wielding the axe in the air. Having caught wind of what was going on, Bruce smiles to the camera while offering a shaka hand gesture for good measure.
"The driver was having a good laugh as he passed by us," Smiley recalled. "I told my daughter how Bruce and myself had seen the Google car and how we staged a scene... she was not happy."
Huge response after Google uploads photos
As predicted, Smiley had to wait a few months for Google to upload the images from Meningie, but it was well worth the wait. And thousands agreed as the "legendary" image of the friends quickly went viral once shared online.
"Best one yet," one person declared. "Straya," another simply wrote.
"This would be a realtor's nightmare," one person joked.
And while Smiley said he was surprised by the huge response to his staged moment, weird and wacky discoveries on Google Maps have become an obsession for many online.
In 2022, one NSW teenager garnered more than 60 million views on TikTok after he pretended to be dead in his Iluka driveway as he saw the Google Street View car approach.
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