Driving, Melbourne

None of us wanted to drive.

In Australia, you must drive on the left.  The steering wheel is on the right.  You use your left foot for clutch, right foot for gas, but left hand for gear shifting.  Or you just hire an automatic car. 

Why do they drive on the left?  Because if you are living in the dark ages, and someone is approaching you on the road, you want to have your sword hand, your right hand, toward them in case you need to suddenly slice off their head.  Therefore, you should be on the left.  At least, that's how it was explained to me in England.

So why do Americans drive on the right?  Because Napoleon was left handed.  When he switched all of continental Europe to the right, Americans were in a period of deep hatred of the British and all things British.  So they switched to the right.  And consequently, if you get stuck at a red light in the USA, your sword hand is flipping radio channels rather than slicing your neighbor. 

Unless you are left handed.  In that case, I have no idea how you change the radio dial.  How do they change the radio dial in Australia?

Melbourne, in particular, is tricky for driving.  Because there are so many trams running through the center of the streets, there are extra tram-related laws that you haven't heard about.

For example, in the Central Business District, the correct way to turn right (across traffic) is called a hook turn.  If you have to turn right, you don't pull over the tram tracks (or you will DIE!), you don't wait on the other side of the tram tracks letting traffic build up behind you (or you will DIE!).  No, what you do is pull to the left, all the way over, until you are completely blocking cross traffic.  Then you wait for the light to turn red.  And then, when the light is red, and you are stuck there across the traffic, you do a quick hook-turn, to the right, across two lanes of traffic and trams, and then continue on with all the cross-traffic you had just been blocking. 

Easy, eh?

Another regulation, that applies to bicycles as well, is that if a tram stops in front of you, you must also stop and wait.  That's the way the pedestrians can get across the road ... "safely".  It's actually a little scary being a pedestrian.  Until you've done it a while, and then you forget.

But I have digressed.

If you come to Melbourne and browse the tourist shops, you will see immediately from the postcards that you must (a) snuggle a koala, (b) hug a kangaroo, and (c) drive the Great Ocean Road.  The Great Ocean Road runs south and west from Melbourne.  It twists from one spectacular sea scape to the next to the next.

We had to drive the Great Ocean Road.

But none of us wanted to drive. 

So we booked five places in a tour bus, for an all day Sunday driving tour. 

Next post:  the Great Ocean Road via tour bus.