The Australian Chronicles

By Mary Ann Kerzel

Driving

Getting the rental car was a piece of cake. That’s where it ended. There it is, a nice little (mid size) Ford and it’s my favorite color, blue! They had given us an upgrade. They had smaller cars!

I went to the passenger side of the car…”Wait a minute, the steering wheel is over here! That’s right they drive on the wrong side of the road. Okay, I can do that.”

Not that I hadn’t driven a car and sat on the left-hand side of a car before, but never as a passenger. A head thing to be sure. At least I didn’t have to drive.

Now you’re on the right hand side of the car with the steering wheel, gas and brake pedals. You can do this with a little practice, right, right! Okay, let’s go and don’t forget to drive on the left side. Doing okay. Don’t forget the turn signal. TURN SIGNAL?? WIPERS!! THEY SWAPPED THE WINDSHIELD WIPER CONTROLS WITH THE TURN SIGNAL CONTROLS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, not only are you driving on the wrong side of the road from the wrong side of the car, but also the turn signal switch is where the wiper switch should be and the wiper switch is where the turn signal switch should be! ARRRGH!!!!!!! Thank God they didn’t switch the gas and brake pedals!

David now refers to using the wipers to signal a turn “the international turn signal”. After driving around for a couple of days he got pretty good at using the right switch. Returning home was a different story. It took David a full two weeks to stop using “the international turn signal”.

Now we are ready to drive to our hotel in the city.

“Which way do we go?”

“I don’t know!”

“Look at the map!”

“I can’t!”

“Why not!”

“Because I can’t… Get on your side of the road! …take my eyes… Get in your lane! …off the… Watch out! …traffic coming at us!!!!!”

The freeway in Melbourne is much like the 826 in Miami but everyone is going the wrong way and I’m on the wrong side of the car! The exits are not marked well. When you see the sign with the number or name of your exit you better turn right NOW because that’s it! There is no warning that your exit is coming up. Only, this is it and you better get off now!

As we are trying to figure out, where we’re going, how to get there, stay in our lane and avoid hitting anyone the highway suddenly narrows and nearly comes to a stop. “OH MY GOD WHAT’S THAT!!!!!!!!!”

A HUGE bright yellow steel girder is coming out of the ground and angling across the entire freeway!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! “That’s the yellow thing I saw from the plane!” On the other side of the freeway was a row of bright red smaller steel posts angling toward the center of the roadway.

Sky Art! “Sky Art my eye! A big traffic hazard!”

We finally made it off the freeway to find even more adventures in driving.

The lanes are very narrow, not as wide as ours are. Our poor newspaper sellers wouldn’t have a chance here. Many city roads are two lanes each way. Some of these roads have 8 lanes that change direction at different times of the day. The left lane is also the lane for the electric trolleys (which have the right of way). The left lane, the one next to the sidewalk, doubles as parking so this lane comes and goes as people park their cars. This makes for constantly dodging parked cars, trolleys and buses. On the streets with the trolleys, cars have to make left turns from the right lane only.

Traffic circles are a lot of fun. Many intersections are not 3 or 4-way intersection like we have, instead there is a circle. Who ever gets in it first has the right of way. But which way am I going? David got really good at them. The Griswalds can’t beat David when it comes to traffic circles.

There are also buses in this same traffic and things suddenly change from 4 sets of lanes to 3 sets of lanes divided by 2 median strips with trees. The outside sets of lanes are one way and have just automobiles and parked vehicles. The inside four lanes are for two-way traffic along with trolleys, buses and cars. The trolleys have the two center lanes. These four lanes contain sections of white zigzag lines, which are “bus stops” and safety zones for trolley passengers. The trolley stops or “safety zones” are just a line of three-foot high posts spaced about two feet apart for about ten feet on the line that divides the lanes. I wouldn’t feel safe there.

I forgot to mention that in Australia the white and yellow lines on the roadways mean just the opposite of what they mean here in the states!

After driving around in circles with me trying to keep David from hitting the curb, poles and other objects that stick out like car mirrors and doors, we got to our hotel! We only drove around it a couple of times.

As hair-raising as it seemed at the time, David did pretty darn good considering he hadn’t had any sleep in over 30 hours, was in a strange country, driving a weird car in weird traffic.