At long last I'd like to give you all some good news regarding Bertha's 'rego'.
But I can't.
The day Matthew flew back to England I received a phone call from his letting agency (his mobile phone was included in the sale of the van) who were trying to contact him. It seems he had left in a bit of a hurry and there were still a few loose ends to tie up. The less-than-friendly letting agent told me that he was placing an order with the police and the Department of Justice to prevent Matthew from leaving the country, or, if he had already left, to have him arrested on his return. I pretended to be sympathetic but pointed out that the situation had nothing to do with me, except that Bertha's new 'rego' sticker was being posted to Matthew's old address. The letting agent replied that all post coming to Matthew was now being confiscated for use as evidence at a forthcoming tribunal hearing and we would not be allowed to have it. What the letting agent didn't know was that Matthew had given us the only key to the padlock on his metal mailbox - our plan was to spend the Easter weekend touring the south east of Victoria and go to the locked mailbox to get the 'rego' from it when we returned to Melbourne.
In parallel with these events I completed the WA Vehicle Transfer Form and sent it away with the police-certified photocopies of my identification and a Money Order. For my postal address I have given the Sydney address of a friend of mine who lives there, so that I can collect the necessary documents from him prior to selling Bertha.
More about Bertha later...
My dad's grandad's brother's 22 year old great grand-daughter (my second cousin twice-removed or something??), Jessica, who I cannot remember ever having met before in my life, is also travelling in Australia and happened to be in Melbourne at the same time as me! We decided to meet up for a few drinks which turned out to be quite a giggle - not least because she turned up almost two hours late and I had drunk five pints of lager while I was waiting. We spent the first ten minutes trying to work out how we are related to each other. Jessica seemed to have it all worked out but I'm still confused now; it was a good night anyway.
Before leaving Melbourne for the Easter weekend we went round to Brian and Jo's house for tea. Jo cooks brilliantly and we hadn't eaten properly for months; clip and I absolutely stuffed ourselves on all the yummy food.
Then we were off in Bertha heading down past Dandenong in torrential rain to Wilson's Promontory National Park. Wilson's Prom is a small peninsula jutting off the south coast of Australia - it is the southern-most point on the mainland. You have to pay an entry fee at a control gate then there is a single thirty mile road through grass plains and over bush-clad hills taking you to the only 'town' on the Prom, Tidal River, which has five hundred camping sites and a shop.
Wilson's Prom is a very popular holiday destination for Australians and foreigners alike; apparently the campsites are in such demand over christmas that each year they are allocated by ballot in July! Wilson's Prom's attraction is undoubtably its rich and accessible wildlife. There were flocks of red and green rosellas, lorikeets and cockatoos everywhere. It's strange seeing people handfeeding multicoloured parrots outside their tents.
At dusk on the first night we took Bertha on a 'wildlife safari' and saw ten kangaroos, five wombats (a big brown badger thing with a pig's nose) and a Tawny Frogmouth (like an owl with it's lip out), all from less than ten yards away. The second night we saw four kangaroos, two wallabies, six wombats and a fox. It was brilliant.
During the day we walked along Squeaky Beach (the sand is so fine that it squeaks when you walk on it) and through a dried-up lake to a huge deserted beach with massive waves.
We left Wilson's Prom just as the Easter rush was starting and headed east in the rain into Gippsland. A company, evidently British, is trying to construct a pylon route through this (huge) area. We've been called 'Pommies' on several occasions now, not always in friendship, but the hand-painted 'POMMIE PYLONS' signs of protest along the roadsides seemed outright racist to me. I would compare them to people in Bradford putting up signs reading 'PAKI SHOPS'. It certainly doesn't make you feel welcome.
We spent a rainy night in Bairnsdale, then visited Lakes Entrance, an artificial entry to Australia's largest lake network formed by a huge sandbank called 90 Mile Beach. We walked along a bit of it and saw more amazing birds, including some Rainbow Lorikeets and twenty nine Pelicans who waited until we got within a few yards of them and then took off together; it was quite spectacular.
Interesting birds we have now seen here include the Welcome Swallow, Galah, Blue Wren, New Holland Honeyeater, Cockatoo, Magpie Lark (Mudlark), Pelican, Restless Flycatcher, Eastern Swamphen, Indian Turtledove, White-winged Chough, Rainbow Lorikeet, Wattle Bird, Tawny Frogmouth, Kookaburra, Crimson Rosella, Straw-necked Ibis, White Ibis and Spur-winged Plover.
clip has read in a book that Galahs (pink and grey cockatoos) seem to enjoy life more than any other bird. There are reports of them swinging upside-down from telegraph wires and sliding down children's playground slides on their backs. Now, every time we see some Galahs, we have to watch them to see if they'll do any tricks.
After Lakes Entrance we headed north up the The Great Alpine Road. This road is great - it passes through some fantastic scenery, a bit like the Yorkshire Dales but much bigger and with more trees. There has been a devastating bushfire here recently and we drove for hours through forests of charred treetrunks and melted roadsigns. From the top of Mount Hotham (1830m) we could see that every tree to the horizon in every direction had been burnt.
We spent Easter Sunday at Omeo Rodeo (pronounced "row-DAY-oh") in Omeo, an interesting little rural town where the visitors' information centre is in a cuckoo clock shop. Finally the weather was back to being hot and sunny again. Unfortunately, the rodeo action was nowhere near as exciting as it had been at the rodeo in New Zealand; maybe the animals were meeker or the riders were better or the novelty had worn off for us. The most entertaining thing about Omeo Rodeo was the people in the crowd. Numerous massive families from seemingly limited gene pools turned up wearing huge cowboy hats in pick-up trucks with dogs on bits of string and 45-litre coolboxes full of beer, rum, coca cola and crushed ice. Everything they did or said was funny. Rodeos are great.
As a treat we spent clip's birthday at a hostel (pronounced "hoss-TELL") in the merged city of Albury/Wodonga on the New South Wales border. She had a birthday breakfast cooked for her, had a secondhand book bought for her, got taken to the cinema to see What A Girl Wants, had a birthday tea made for her (complete with apple crumble and custard pudding) and drank beer. What more could a girl ask for?
So, after a few relaxing days we returned to Melbourne to collect the 'rego' from Matthew's old mailbox. The padlock had been forced off and the open mailbox had only one letter in it, addressed to an Esmeralda. The letting agent says he did not remove the padlock and has not received any mail from the owner of the apartment whom it has so far proved impossible to contact. We can only suppose that the 'rego' has been lost in the post or binned by the owner.
We spent the rest of the day stocking up on provisions in Moonee Ponds. Waiting to cross a road, a man came running from Moonee Ponds train station with five blokes in hot pursuit. The first one (who was wearing an official Metro uniform) managed to get him to the ground barely five yards from us (kneeing him and kicking him in the face twice as he did so) and held him down until the other lads caught up and punched the guy on the floor in the face while he shouted "For fuck's sake, I'll give you my name and address!" and "For god's sake". Later we saw him talking to the police with blood pouring down his face. From what we can gather he was running away because he'd failed to produce a ticket for his train journey. Charming. I think we'll be buying tickets from now on.
We rang WA Vehicle Licensing again (sixth time now) and requested a duplicate 'rego' sticker (we can be fined for not displaying one). The lady said she couldn't send out a replacement sticker to a different address than that of the current owner and of course the transfer form hasn't reached them yet. She is doing us a "big favour" by sending it to my friend in Sydney; we'll have to sort out how to get it off him later on.
Life away from home is still odd. It's like a mental dislocation of reality or a perverse reversal of normality; almost every night I have very vivid dreams that I am back at home (so vivid I believe they are real) and every morning I wake up, cold and dying for the toilet, on a mildewed foam mattress in the back of an old converted minibus. Doing essentially the same job for the same company for nearly a decade and then leaving so suddenly and coming so far away for so long was like stepping out of my life and into that of a different person. If I lose my immediate focus on what I am doing I am overwhelmed by the ominous sensation that there is something, something very big but indefinible, wrong.
More emails please.
14 April 2003
Getting anything done in this country is an absolute fucking nightmare.
Today we went to the Post Office to see if the Statutory Declaration of Out Of State Address had arrived and of course it hadn't. Why should it be any quicker to post something along to the next city than it is to post something all the way around the earth? We rang WA Vehicle Licensing yet again and, after being on hold for twenty minutes, got through to someone who had never even heard of the Statutory Declaration I am waiting for. Instead he is faxing me a copy of a vehicle transfer form which I have to fill in and post back to him with a money order for the stamp duty. He says it is impossible to transfer ownership of the vehicle unless the new owner has a residential address in WA, although I can just make one up and then provide a postal address anywhere in the country, but in any case the new ownership documents won't be posted out to my postal address until September (after I've left the country) unless I send an additional payment for a copy of the documents to be sent to me earlier, and I need them to sell the vehicle on. In addition I have to get a policeman or a magistrate to certify the authenticity of photocopies of my driving licence and passport and send those along too.
This country is beginning to piss me off.
Today we went to the Post Office to see if the Statutory Declaration of Out Of State Address had arrived and of course it hadn't. Why should it be any quicker to post something along to the next city than it is to post something all the way around the earth? We rang WA Vehicle Licensing yet again and, after being on hold for twenty minutes, got through to someone who had never even heard of the Statutory Declaration I am waiting for. Instead he is faxing me a copy of a vehicle transfer form which I have to fill in and post back to him with a money order for the stamp duty. He says it is impossible to transfer ownership of the vehicle unless the new owner has a residential address in WA, although I can just make one up and then provide a postal address anywhere in the country, but in any case the new ownership documents won't be posted out to my postal address until September (after I've left the country) unless I send an additional payment for a copy of the documents to be sent to me earlier, and I need them to sell the vehicle on. In addition I have to get a policeman or a magistrate to certify the authenticity of photocopies of my driving licence and passport and send those along too.
This country is beginning to piss me off.
12 April 2003
'The Free Comedy And Beer Show' was exactly the opposite. Wrong pub, wrong entrance fee, wrong beer, wrong comedians, free but shit food. We didn't bother going in.
I rang my old college friend Rod back in England and he reminded me that a mutual Geordie friend of ours, Brian, had taken a job in Melbourne a few years ago and moved over here with his wife, Jo. We looked them up in the phone book (Darling Street immediately sounded like the right address), got in touch and went out for the day to the trendy coastal resort of Williamstown - sun, yachts and expensive pavement-cafes galore. Both seem to have settled here extremely well and Brian says he's had no problems with the Australians - hmm, to be honest I'm surprised they can understand a single word he says to them. Thanks for the cheese dudes.
According to Jo, the mayor of Melbourne recently closed down the local mental health institutions, replaced them with a 'Care In The Community' scheme and spent the money he saved on big blue lights to go round the tops of the office blocks in the city centre. A few of the former patients are evidently now living in our hostel. There is one guy in particular, the 'Creepy Gawping Staring Bastard', who wears round glasses and a safari hat, and stands motionless while we cook, staring unblinkingly at us for minutes at a time. Sinister or what?
Another hazard of staying in YHA hostels is that they occasionally take in groups of kids on school trips. The kids are excited to be staying away from home but we get kept awake half the night by them running up and down the corridor outside our room, giggling and repeatedly slamming their doors. The teachers are useless at controlling them and they didn't shut up until I finally went out and shouted obscenities at them. In the morning they looked at me as if I were some kind of nutter. You could almost hear them thinking, "Oh well, I suppose we've got big blue lights round the tops of the office blocks in the city centre."
The next day Matthew and Claire picked us up in Bertha (note - we have renamed the campervan) and kindly took us to the trendy coastal resort of St Kilda - sun, yachts and expensive pavement-cafes galore. It was interesting to be in the sexuality minority for a change. We're getting on very well with Matt and Claire - it's a shame they're leaving Australia just as we're arriving. In the morning we had breakfast together at an expensive pavement-cafe and watched a drug deal.
The Australian vehicle licensing system is a complete pain in the arse. Australia has eight main states and each of them has a different way of doing things. Each vehicle is registered in a particular state and bears number plates from that state. Note - the registered owner does not have to live in the plated state, unless they are a new owner. In addition, each vehicle must display a 'rego' from its plated state, in the windscreen - this is similar to UK car tax and includes third party medical insurance. Some states allow six month or twelve month 'rego's, others only allow twelve months - 'rego' fees also differ from state to state. Anyone with a driving licence can legally drive any vehicle with a valid 'rego'. Third party property (or comprehensive) insurance is an optional extra. When a vehicle is sold, any 'rego' remaining is automatically transferred to the new owner providing the plates are not changed, but a 2.75% Car Stamp Duty tax (there are other percentage brackets depending on purchase price) and a transfer fee are levied on the buyer. Some states, but not all, have an annual Roadworthy Test like an MOT - in these states you need a valid Roadworthy Certificate to transfer ownership of a vehicle.
Matthew and Claire bought Bertha from a garage in Perth, Western Australia, so she has WA plates. Bertha's WA 'rego' expired on the day we bought her, so we telephoned WA Vehicle Licencing and renewed it for six months by credit card so that we were insured to drive her. The new WA 'rego' sticker is being sent to Matthew's current address in Victoria. We bought Bertha in Victoria which only allows twelve month 'rego's and insists on a valid RWC for vehicle ownership transfer. We telephoned WA Vehicle Licencing to ask if we could do the transfer in Victoria whilst keeping the WA plates (and avoiding the hassle of the RWC) but the organic cattlegrid I spoke to told us we had to post the WA plates back to Perth, have Bertha RWC'd, then reregister and re-'rego' her in Victoria. A refund of any outstanding WA 'rego' (six months) would then be posted to an address (which I don't have) as a cheque (which I wouldn't be able to cash because I don't have a bank account). The only alternative would be to drive to Western Australia (1600 miles each way) and transfer ownership in a post office there.
It's so rubbish it's almost funny.
The next day we telephoned WA Vehicle Licencing again and asked exactly the same questions as before; this time they told us not to bother transferring the ownership at all because we probably wouldn't get caught anyway. Then they said we should take the WA plates to a Vehicle Licencing office in Melbourne, hand them in and get a receipt, photocopy the receipt, then post the original receipt to Perth along with a photocopy of the transaction receipt. Once again a useless WA 'rego' refund cheque would be sent to a non-existent address in Victoria.
I was at the point of tearing my hair out when I finally spoke to a bloke called John at WA Vehicle Licencing and he knew what he was talking about. Because I don't live in WA I must fill in a Statutory Declaration of an Out Of State Address. This is being faxed to me in Melbourne. Then I fax it back to WA and they post my ownership documentation to a Poste Restante (temporary post office) address anywhere in Australia (and invoice me for the stamp duty and transfer fee).
While we were waiting for everything to get sorted out we took Bertha west along the 'Great Ocean Road' for a few days. This road runs alongside some fantastic coastal scenery - we saw lots of long, hot deserted beachs and some very pretty rock formations, the most famous being the Twelve Apostles. We saw two Koalas in Eucalyptus trees, an Echidna (a big hedgehog thing with a long nose) and lots of exciting new birds - flocks of noisy White Cockatoos, bright pink noisy Galahs, Pelicans and bright red and green parrots. There was very little traffic during the day and even less in the evening (people tend not to drive at night because of all the kangaroos and wombats on the roads). We slept in Bertha in a lay-by. At eight o'clock the next morning a dickhead in a red truck drove past and saw us, peeped his horn, did a u-turn, came screeching up to us, shouted "I'm fed up of you bastards, pissing and shitting everywhere. Camp in a campground!", then span his wheels and drove away. So much for Australian hospitality.
I rang my old college friend Rod back in England and he reminded me that a mutual Geordie friend of ours, Brian, had taken a job in Melbourne a few years ago and moved over here with his wife, Jo. We looked them up in the phone book (Darling Street immediately sounded like the right address), got in touch and went out for the day to the trendy coastal resort of Williamstown - sun, yachts and expensive pavement-cafes galore. Both seem to have settled here extremely well and Brian says he's had no problems with the Australians - hmm, to be honest I'm surprised they can understand a single word he says to them. Thanks for the cheese dudes.
According to Jo, the mayor of Melbourne recently closed down the local mental health institutions, replaced them with a 'Care In The Community' scheme and spent the money he saved on big blue lights to go round the tops of the office blocks in the city centre. A few of the former patients are evidently now living in our hostel. There is one guy in particular, the 'Creepy Gawping Staring Bastard', who wears round glasses and a safari hat, and stands motionless while we cook, staring unblinkingly at us for minutes at a time. Sinister or what?
Another hazard of staying in YHA hostels is that they occasionally take in groups of kids on school trips. The kids are excited to be staying away from home but we get kept awake half the night by them running up and down the corridor outside our room, giggling and repeatedly slamming their doors. The teachers are useless at controlling them and they didn't shut up until I finally went out and shouted obscenities at them. In the morning they looked at me as if I were some kind of nutter. You could almost hear them thinking, "Oh well, I suppose we've got big blue lights round the tops of the office blocks in the city centre."
The next day Matthew and Claire picked us up in Bertha (note - we have renamed the campervan) and kindly took us to the trendy coastal resort of St Kilda - sun, yachts and expensive pavement-cafes galore. It was interesting to be in the sexuality minority for a change. We're getting on very well with Matt and Claire - it's a shame they're leaving Australia just as we're arriving. In the morning we had breakfast together at an expensive pavement-cafe and watched a drug deal.
The Australian vehicle licensing system is a complete pain in the arse. Australia has eight main states and each of them has a different way of doing things. Each vehicle is registered in a particular state and bears number plates from that state. Note - the registered owner does not have to live in the plated state, unless they are a new owner. In addition, each vehicle must display a 'rego' from its plated state, in the windscreen - this is similar to UK car tax and includes third party medical insurance. Some states allow six month or twelve month 'rego's, others only allow twelve months - 'rego' fees also differ from state to state. Anyone with a driving licence can legally drive any vehicle with a valid 'rego'. Third party property (or comprehensive) insurance is an optional extra. When a vehicle is sold, any 'rego' remaining is automatically transferred to the new owner providing the plates are not changed, but a 2.75% Car Stamp Duty tax (there are other percentage brackets depending on purchase price) and a transfer fee are levied on the buyer. Some states, but not all, have an annual Roadworthy Test like an MOT - in these states you need a valid Roadworthy Certificate to transfer ownership of a vehicle.
Matthew and Claire bought Bertha from a garage in Perth, Western Australia, so she has WA plates. Bertha's WA 'rego' expired on the day we bought her, so we telephoned WA Vehicle Licencing and renewed it for six months by credit card so that we were insured to drive her. The new WA 'rego' sticker is being sent to Matthew's current address in Victoria. We bought Bertha in Victoria which only allows twelve month 'rego's and insists on a valid RWC for vehicle ownership transfer. We telephoned WA Vehicle Licencing to ask if we could do the transfer in Victoria whilst keeping the WA plates (and avoiding the hassle of the RWC) but the organic cattlegrid I spoke to told us we had to post the WA plates back to Perth, have Bertha RWC'd, then reregister and re-'rego' her in Victoria. A refund of any outstanding WA 'rego' (six months) would then be posted to an address (which I don't have) as a cheque (which I wouldn't be able to cash because I don't have a bank account). The only alternative would be to drive to Western Australia (1600 miles each way) and transfer ownership in a post office there.
It's so rubbish it's almost funny.
The next day we telephoned WA Vehicle Licencing again and asked exactly the same questions as before; this time they told us not to bother transferring the ownership at all because we probably wouldn't get caught anyway. Then they said we should take the WA plates to a Vehicle Licencing office in Melbourne, hand them in and get a receipt, photocopy the receipt, then post the original receipt to Perth along with a photocopy of the transaction receipt. Once again a useless WA 'rego' refund cheque would be sent to a non-existent address in Victoria.
I was at the point of tearing my hair out when I finally spoke to a bloke called John at WA Vehicle Licencing and he knew what he was talking about. Because I don't live in WA I must fill in a Statutory Declaration of an Out Of State Address. This is being faxed to me in Melbourne. Then I fax it back to WA and they post my ownership documentation to a Poste Restante (temporary post office) address anywhere in Australia (and invoice me for the stamp duty and transfer fee).
While we were waiting for everything to get sorted out we took Bertha west along the 'Great Ocean Road' for a few days. This road runs alongside some fantastic coastal scenery - we saw lots of long, hot deserted beachs and some very pretty rock formations, the most famous being the Twelve Apostles. We saw two Koalas in Eucalyptus trees, an Echidna (a big hedgehog thing with a long nose) and lots of exciting new birds - flocks of noisy White Cockatoos, bright pink noisy Galahs, Pelicans and bright red and green parrots. There was very little traffic during the day and even less in the evening (people tend not to drive at night because of all the kangaroos and wombats on the roads). We slept in Bertha in a lay-by. At eight o'clock the next morning a dickhead in a red truck drove past and saw us, peeped his horn, did a u-turn, came screeching up to us, shouted "I'm fed up of you bastards, pissing and shitting everywhere. Camp in a campground!", then span his wheels and drove away. So much for Australian hospitality.
03 April 2003
At last the campervan gods are looking down on us with big smiles on their bearded faces.
We took the surprisingly smooth-running tram out to Maribyrnong via Moonee Ponds (birthplace of Dame Edna), got lost, walked a bit, took another tram, and successfully made our rendezvous with Matthew, Claire and Beatrice in a KFC carpark - Matthew and Claire being travelling partners from London and Selby respectively, Beatrice being an extended-wheelbase 1985, 2.7 litre Holden Shuttle Van with a new clutch, new differential, new exhaust, new Western Australia plates and reconditioned engine. It's clean and cheap and we like it a lot. Matthew and Claire bought it nine months ago as a minibus, removed the seats, built a wooden bed and looked after it properly - there doesn't look to be much wrong with it at all. Tomorrow it's being seen by a mechanic and, if there are no hidden problems, we'll soon be the proud new owners. The asking price is $2250 (about 875 pounds) but it needs two new front tyres, a new windscreen and six months REGO (a bit like UK road tax but it's combined with ownership registration and third party medical insurance) which will push the price to 1050 pounds. Having seen numerous utterly knackered 1982 campervans this week going for over 1500 pounds I think we've got a real bargain. In fact, we should be able to sell it for a tidy profit later on!
We're currently in the throes of Melbourne Comedy Festival so I'm sorry to leave you but we're off to check out 'The Free Comedy And Beer Show' now.
Toodle pip.
We took the surprisingly smooth-running tram out to Maribyrnong via Moonee Ponds (birthplace of Dame Edna), got lost, walked a bit, took another tram, and successfully made our rendezvous with Matthew, Claire and Beatrice in a KFC carpark - Matthew and Claire being travelling partners from London and Selby respectively, Beatrice being an extended-wheelbase 1985, 2.7 litre Holden Shuttle Van with a new clutch, new differential, new exhaust, new Western Australia plates and reconditioned engine. It's clean and cheap and we like it a lot. Matthew and Claire bought it nine months ago as a minibus, removed the seats, built a wooden bed and looked after it properly - there doesn't look to be much wrong with it at all. Tomorrow it's being seen by a mechanic and, if there are no hidden problems, we'll soon be the proud new owners. The asking price is $2250 (about 875 pounds) but it needs two new front tyres, a new windscreen and six months REGO (a bit like UK road tax but it's combined with ownership registration and third party medical insurance) which will push the price to 1050 pounds. Having seen numerous utterly knackered 1982 campervans this week going for over 1500 pounds I think we've got a real bargain. In fact, we should be able to sell it for a tidy profit later on!
We're currently in the throes of Melbourne Comedy Festival so I'm sorry to leave you but we're off to check out 'The Free Comedy And Beer Show' now.
Toodle pip.
02 April 2003
G'day from Melbourne!
Initial impressions of Australia are good. Melbourne is the second-biggest city in Australia but it's airy and sunny and modern and everyone seems to be very friendly. The roads are a bit of a nightmare though - cars drive on the left but there are so many lanes of traffic combined with so many busy tramlines that accidents seem to be inevitable. We saw two major crashes in the space of five minutes as we walked around a roundabout. Things aren't helped by the fact that, at some road junctions in Melbourne, but not all of them, you have to be in the left-hand lane to turn right at a crossroads; the lights change to green and the right-turners form a queue down the left-hand side of the junction, blocking the cars that are waiting to turn left, then have to try and cross six lanes of traffic before they get cut off by all the cars and trams setting off in the other direction.
Trying to buy a campervan is murder. All the ones we have been to see have been knackered, and all the decent ones have already been sold. We've spent four days looking for a van now. It's very stressful. Today we've seen a promising new advert but as usual the seller isn't answering her phone. Rather cheekily, we've taken all her adverts down to make sure we get first refusal. Wish us luck.
Sometimes I get homesick. I don't miss people necessarily - I miss familiarity. I miss not having a home. We never normally stay anywhere more than two or three days so you can imagine how chaotic everything is, having to pack up and move on, find somewhere to stay, unpack, etc. The feeling is hard to describe.. it makes you feel like everyone at home has somehow forgotten about you.
I'll have more to report when (if) we finally leave Melbourne.
clop
Initial impressions of Australia are good. Melbourne is the second-biggest city in Australia but it's airy and sunny and modern and everyone seems to be very friendly. The roads are a bit of a nightmare though - cars drive on the left but there are so many lanes of traffic combined with so many busy tramlines that accidents seem to be inevitable. We saw two major crashes in the space of five minutes as we walked around a roundabout. Things aren't helped by the fact that, at some road junctions in Melbourne, but not all of them, you have to be in the left-hand lane to turn right at a crossroads; the lights change to green and the right-turners form a queue down the left-hand side of the junction, blocking the cars that are waiting to turn left, then have to try and cross six lanes of traffic before they get cut off by all the cars and trams setting off in the other direction.
Trying to buy a campervan is murder. All the ones we have been to see have been knackered, and all the decent ones have already been sold. We've spent four days looking for a van now. It's very stressful. Today we've seen a promising new advert but as usual the seller isn't answering her phone. Rather cheekily, we've taken all her adverts down to make sure we get first refusal. Wish us luck.
Sometimes I get homesick. I don't miss people necessarily - I miss familiarity. I miss not having a home. We never normally stay anywhere more than two or three days so you can imagine how chaotic everything is, having to pack up and move on, find somewhere to stay, unpack, etc. The feeling is hard to describe.. it makes you feel like everyone at home has somehow forgotten about you.
I'll have more to report when (if) we finally leave Melbourne.
clop
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