let's talk about driving

Australians, as they are about a lot of things, are very casual about driving. Here is the road that leads down to our house (Orpen). Notice that there are no lines down the middle or the side. Almost all the roads around here are like that with the exception of a few main roads.

I think that the idea is that you can drive wherever you want until another car meets up with you and tnen you just move to your left.


In Dalby, there are 5 stoplights (3 on the main highway, 2 on the road that parallels the main highway) and there are no stop signs. Instead, all over the place are 'Give Way' signs which means 'Yield' in American.


So you come to a road crossing and if you have the 'Give Way' sign, then you just have to slow down, look to your right first (always to the right first) and left and then go. If nothing's coming, then you don't even have to stop. It's so much more efficient. But knowing how traffic works in Atlanta, these signs would be terrible.

If there is a road crossing where one road is perhaps not bigger than another road and they don't want to handle traffic with 'Give Way' signs, then they stick a roundabout in the middle of the road. Here's the sign warning you that you have a roundabout coming up.


And here's the roundabout.


This is the one in our neighborhood - only one lane. Remember on some of the ones from our trip last weekend, there were 3 lanes! The general rule is that you yield to your right. So you approach that dotted line and slow down. If nothing is coming from the right, then you keep going. It's scary when you are the car with the right away and something pulls up from your left and you aren't really sure if they're going to stop or not.

Also, Josh constantly trys to claim that I don't look to my right on this roundabout. But I do. Every time. Also, he says that I get really close to the outside curb when going around. And well, okay - that statement might be true.

And don't forget - we're learning all of this with the steering wheel on the wrong side of the car.

There are a few things that we've had to get use to -
1. not hugging the left side of the road and scaring the passenger,
2. not turning on the windshield wipers when we really want a turn signal (signals on the right)
3. not going to the other side of the car to get in when you're driving (I've done it 3 times in the past 5 days - it's embarrassing)

Just as a note, I'm the driver in the family over here, but these pictures were taken one our trip to Toowoomba a few weeks ago. Josh drove so that he could get some experience behind the wheel, but I think that he can count on one hand the number of times that he's driven over here.
I was a happy passenger though.