I had a post and pictures all planned out for yesterday, but I worked too late and by the time it was 8:45 all I wanted to do was hit the hay and not try to be coherent for the internet. And I'm kind of glad that I didn't post because I was going to talk about driving in Australia, but our experience today really made me understand driving in Australia.
We left for Caloundra around 11:45 (after my tea with the 2 other girls that I know). Josh hasn't been feeling that well since he has been working side-by-side with a guy that came in with a cold this week. Caloundra is a coastal town about 3.5 hours from Dalby, but because we needed to get our quarantined and now cleaned shoes from Brisbane, we had to head east to Brisbane and THEN up the coast instead of just going diagnally from Dalby.
We made it to the outskirts of Brisbane within the 2 hour and 15 minute mark and that's where it started going downhill. We bought a navigation system last night because I wasn't really confident on us just going off to big cities without having some type of directional aide. And I missed the exit that I was suppose to get off of. The GPS lady told me that it was coming in 600 meters, but what she really meant is that I should have gotten over to the left all the way and flowed left until 600 meters when road appeared. And I got to experience my first double-lane, motorway roundabout.
A roundabout is what the Australians have decided is the best way to avoid building bridges on highways or putting stoplights and stop signs on smaller streets. It's also an immense amount of stress when you have 50 cars wanting to go aroudn the small roundabout. The rules are you yield to the right, but I also think that the rule is that you just punch the gas and just hop that the other guy slows down enough to let you get around safely to your exit. AND your exit can be any number out there. It's pretty funny when you approach the roundabout and hear the GPS lady tell you to enter the roundabout and take the 4th exit. Josh and I quickly learned to start counting the exits.
Luckily, I was able to follow directions to get us out of our misdirection and we made it to the warehouse to pick up our shoes. For anyone interested, they were both Josh's shoes, but I'm pretty sure that he didn't need either pair of them. And since I was primarily in charge of getting our stuff together to be packed, I think that I am somewhat to blame for them getting in the stack dirty. But we got the shoes.
After lunch, we were on our way from Brisbane to Caloundra - only a 111 km ride - should have only taken about an hour. What I didn't account for was that everyone in Australia gets off of work at 3:00 on Friday. And when you have 4 million people hitting the streets of Brisbane all at the same time, you have a major traffic jam. It was a nightmare. And made us not miss Atlanta at all!
It took us 2.5 hours to go that 111km ride. And with a sick boy in the passenger seat and a stressed out girl in the driver's seat, it wasn't such a great way to start a weekend holiday. When we finally made it here, the hotel/condo room made it totally worth it. Even though we're only on the 2nd floor, the room is spacious and modern and clean. It was dark when we got here so we haven't gotten to see a lot, but we were able to relax some, get some dinner and are back in the room now. I'm trying to finish up some work and Josh is trying to feel better. We did get some medicine from a convenience store to hopefully help Josh through the night. I've got my fingers crossed that he will be feeling better in the morning so we can still make it to the Australia Zoo.
If he's bed-ridden, then I'll just make a day at the spa.
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