0704121900 Road Trip

No Cantonese lessons this week, but I did have to explain some simple Cantonese words to the family on the farm.
I like the way the Cantonese language has one simple word for “everyone else in the world”. Regardless of gender and number one simple word for: you, them, those, He. She, ya’all, everybody – one word - Nei.

My trip to Melbourne was a fabulous adventure. I decided to adopt a “free range” approach to the trip planning. I would simply head south until I saw some water. If it was the Tasman Sea then I would go right a bit, and if it was The Great Australian bite then I would go left a bit. It was not that relaxing in practice – I had to make decisions on the correct, most efficient route while in a strange town, at a roundabout, often with full laden semi-trailers bearing down on me, with their exhaust brakes growling and wisps of smoke emanating from the trailer bogies. I sat in the middle lane thinking – Newell or New England? I went through Sydney. Rain, night, lost, Sydney traffic – it was a fantastic adventure. While riding in the rain through Sydney traffic, I was reminded of what it is like to really want to go home. Home or relief was 1000km in opposite directions. I was at the half-way mark in Sydney when I finally saw reason and bought a map.

I have heard of the interstate rivalry between the Victorians and the New South Welshmen – I didn’t think that it extended to the point that the road signs in New South Wales do not even mention Melbourne. That is how I ended up in Sydney – I just picked a place further south - which is also how I ended up in Canberra - which in turn was instrumental in how I ended up in the Snowy Mountains.

The gloves that my mum gave me 20 years ago were perfect – the trousers that I wear in tropical Queensland were doing a great job of covering my nakedness, but that’s all. I arrived at a motel in the Snowy Mountains at midnight, and due to shivering uncontrollably, I must have looked like I was either drunk of having an epileptic fit. I could hardly sign the book. The room had no working heater. It had an air conditioner – yes I checked if it was reverse cycle – it wasn’t. The broken heater was located under the desk and when I tried to operate the thing it merely blew out a whisper of slightly colder air. I had a hot shower and went to bed.

NSW have an interesting way of ensuring that all travelers slow down to less than 100km/h before every town. They, that is the NSW traffic authority, do this by installing a speed camera on the road into the town. A traveler simply meanders through this at 80km/h then speeds up again when they have passed the camera. The Victorians have a far more diabolical scheme - they have two cameras at a known distance and average the speed between observations. This ensures that hundreds of kilometers are covered. I hate the Victorian system, but I love how its done. There is nothing a traveler can do to escape. When confronted with such a scheme, you might as well just stop and have a picnic.

There is a certain amount of preparation in every project, either in the design or the implementation. The free-range approach to route planning means that the preparation time is spent in the autopsy – how to avoid the same mistake next time. The instructions for the return trip were simple and easy, they were given to me by my sister who wants to be, or may already be, depending on who you ask, a truck driver – she said, “take the Hume then take the Newell”.