Australia has been on my list of places to visit for a while. In addition, it was also on my wife’s list. So, in April 2019, we both got to check it off our lists with a family trip to Melbourne, Victoria. It was a great vacation, two weeks with my family in the “land down under”.
Flying Time
Getting to Melbourne consisted of a long flight, 20hrs total. The first leg was a 5-hour flight to San Francisco. We had a long layover. So, my son and I visited another of my list items, Alcatraz. Since it wasn’t on my wife’s list, she and my daughter did some sightseeing of their own. After spending the day touring, we boarded a flight for 15 hours in the air – to date my longest single flight.
Beware of Snakes
I knew Australia had a lot of venomous snakes. There were enough warning signs about them. Since I planned to do some hiking, it was a concern. I didn’t fly 20 hours to get bitten by a poisonous snake, with no anti-venom in existence. At any rate, the snakes were a secondary concern. There was a chance that we wouldn’t see any. Fortunately, that was the case. Instead, the thing that most concerned me was having to drive a car on the left side of the road, with the steering wheel on the right side of the car.
- I had to unlearn every driving instinct from 35 yrs of driving.
- Making left turns were okay.
- All right turns were very tricky
- Driving on the freeway was okay, because every car is moving in the same direction.
- Driving with oncoming traffic was terrifying, I couldn’t help but think about head on collision.
- I don’t like driving in cities. It is normally chaotic for me. The chaos was multiplied by 10.
- Having a vehicle with lane assist was very helpful. I kept drifting to the left.
- Everything was completely flipped. So, we turned on the windshield wipers several times, when we meant to signal a turn.
