Book 'em Danno!

Warning, this post contains a rant from a middle aged woman!

As you know we were on a road trip last week. Usually the Signigicant Other does most of the driving in the covertible, however for safety and comfort we try and divyy the driving up on long trips. This is the story of how I got my first speeding ticket for 9 years!

I did the drive from Albury after we stopped for a coffee and a snack. It was a wonderful day for driving, 19 degrees, warm and sunny and the road was not too busy.  (Are you getting the drift here?..)

Anyway I was rationalising with myself that the highway patrol were probably concentrated more around the Canberra exit to catch the skiiers coming home from the weekend, so I took a little liberty with my speed. I am pretty careful and usually know the sort of places they like to hide and can adjust my speed accordingly, however, on Sunday all my rationalising came to nought, when I got "pulled over".

I did not get upset or cranky,  because I did the crime so I would have to pay the fine.  But Ouch!

that's $248 big ones, and I am not sure how many points, lucky I have a full complement!

Anyway I was thinking about it while I continued to drive (at the limit this time) and the poor Significant Other was party to my ear bashing about the stupidity of some of our speed limits.

So here is my rant....

On divided motorways, highways and freeways with at least 2 lanes the maximum limit is 110km/h. On a single lane secondary road outside the metropolitan area with no divided road the maximum limit is 100km/h and I think in parts of WA it could be 110km/h as well ( based on a road trip we did to Albany in 2001).

Anyway, I got to thinking as I am wont to do and thought how do they decide what the speed limits should be. I seem to recall as a child that the speed limit in open roads may have been 60mph ( 105km) and we are talking here in the 60's and early 70's, no seat belts, no ABS, no airbags, no power steering etc etc... fast forward to today and our cars are much better built and equipped, indeed one of my very dear friends when buying her last new car said it had so many  airbags they would probably the thing that killed her!

So I want to know why our speed limits have not been adjusted to reflect the better cars and (sometimes) better roads we now have.

I find it amusing ( and annoying) that I was in Hungary a number of years ago and my friend wanted me to drive for a while, so there I was in an unfamiliar car ( nice Mercedes, thanks for asking..) driving on the unfamiliar (wrong) side of the road, in an area that I did not know and I felt quite comfortable driving at 170km/h, indeed everyone seems to drive a lot better in Europe to my mind, they come up, overtake and move over again as quick as they can ( Unlike most of the fast land hogs here!)

Even in USA I can drive faster than I can here, I did a quick check on the font of all knowledge, Wikpedia and this is what they had to say..

"The highest speed limits are generally 75 mph (121 km/h) in western states and 70 mph (113 km/h) in eastern states."

So your honour, I rest my case. 


An amusing aside to my rant, the place I got booked was

Hume HIghway, Bookham!  Poetic Justice.

What about you, do you think our speed limits need to be reviewed?

Road Trip

Last week the Significant Other and I took a "mini break" and hit the road to Ballarat. It was somewhere that we had both wanted to see for a while due to its history and buildings and after watching The Doctor Blake mysteries on the ABC earlier this year we decided to do it for our mid year break.

I love mini breaks, only a couple of days away from home but it can really revive you and I find that it just gives me a bit of a mental health break to get on with the rest of the year. Last year we did our road trip to Bendigo and saw the Grace Kelly Style Icon exhibition so this years road trip had a couple of things in common with last year. 

I planned our trip around getting to see the Hollywood Costumes in Melbourne, and having spent a lot of time in Melbourne before we felt we could get by on a day trip, so we planned to stay in Ballarat and then catch the train into Town on the day we had tickets for the exhibition.

It's great to get out and see regional Australia and see how life fares outside of the capital cities. One little town we love to stop at for morning tea is Gunning, so if you are in the vicinity I can highly recommend the Merino Cafe which also has the best caramel slice I have ever tasted!  

Meeting the locals

Selection of tasty cakes at the Merino Cafe

A couple of hours later and it was lunch time, so off the highway and into Albury we went and found this lovely art deco hotel and had an old fashioned counter lunch.

Art Deco Hotel

We arrived in Ballarat that evening, it was dark but even then we could see the magnificence of the buildings and the wide streets.

Over the next few days I can say that Ballarat did not disappoint us. We did the heritage walking tours, visited the art gallery  (which was the first regional art gallery in Australia), we drove out of town and visited little villages had wonderful meals and wine (that goes without saying!) and did the tourist thing at Sovereign Hill. They have this amazing evening show that tells the story of the Eureka Stockade and it is done with lights, pyrotechnics and was truly awe inspiring. I highly recommend that one!

One thing that I did like was the Avenue of Honour, it is 22kms long and it planted with trees all the way along which represent EVERY man from Ballarat who went to WW1.  When you just see tree after tree and know that represents a person it puts it all into a sombre perspective.

So that's holidays over and back to work for me!

City to Surf, some history

As regular readers will know I am doing the City to Surf this weekend as one of my new year's resolutions, so I have been ruminating on it and thought I would share some trivia about it with you.

FACT:  I was at the first ever city to surf!  Not as a competitor but an observer!


It was 1971 and we were holidaying at Bondi  (as you did in those days, before the trendy and beautiful people moved in),  we were from the country, so a seaside holiday was the done thing then.  Usually we spent the August/September school holidays ( this in the olden days where we had 3 school terms a year, not 4)  at the Entrance but this year my parents pulled out all the stops and we were at the "Hotel Astra" right on Bondi Beach. My sister and I even got to have our own room, which was a bit of a hoot! My poor brother had to share with the parents!

Anyway these were the days when the sewerage was pumped out at Bondi and this particular time it was apparently very polluted, so much in fact that Channel 7 news came and filmed it for the evening news  and I even made it to camera ( and the news that night!) swimming in the water which was apparently too polluted for the normal swimmers to enter, but I had no problem with it!

We did wonderful things like going to the Harold Park trots on the Friday night and I can recall having dinner in an Italian restaurant which had the fish nets and empty Chianti bottles all over. Doubtless it is some trendy cafe nowadays.

Anyway one thing I have never heard mentioned over all these years is that there was a great tragedy at the first City to Surf. I have managed to find a reference to it here, so I am not going to ruin the story, you will have to follow the link to find out!

One other item of interest is that my wedding reception was held at the Bondi Icebergs ( before it was trendy, but then I have ALWAYS been ahead of the curve!).

So I hope you all wish me well for Sunday and hopefully I will still be here to blog about it next week.

Many happy returns

This week it was my birthday, not a "special" one,  but I think every birthday ought to be special don't you?

I didn't want to go out for dinner on my actual birthday but rather a nice lunch on the Friday, so much more relaxing, so the Significant Other took me to one of my all time faves here in the highlands,  Josh's cafe.

We started with a local wine which I can highly recommend.

For entree I had falafel and then for main course wonderful lamb Kofta with tomato cous cous.

And because it was my birthday and I was not driving, we had another wine!

Not wanting to be greedy we shared a desert, a chocolate samosa with strawberry and mint and vanilla bean ice cream... delicious!

then a coffee, complete with a love heart...

and then because it was my birthday I got a "special" Happy Birthday song from the entire restaurant, along with a one off serenade!  Made me feel quite special indeed.

So now my birthday week is over, and back to normal life so for any of you  yet to have your birthdays this year, I wish you all a Happy Birthday and hope you enjoy yourself as much as I did this year.