Unskilled Employment for the personality-challenged

 We approached this with a little trepidation as it would be our first go at a Victorian Border Control.  

This was made a little more tricky as my printer (in Canberra) has gummed up, after not being used for a year, and only did half the black and white business.  And it wasn't the black!  So we were relying on the copies of the permits emailed to us: another innovation.

The departure was fine: as always I was concerned as to whether I could fit the mountain of stuff into the Jetta and as usual it just swallowed it all.  Off we went.

All was fine, although I did notice that the quite heavy traffic coming towards us was coming in pulses: road clear for some time and then 20 cars in a stream  This smelt of road works in our future.  So it was.  A short distance after Bunyan we found the traffic stopped.  Here is the situation:

We joined the queue at the maroon line and sat there for 17 minutes and 22 seconds.  It turned out they were resurfacing the road (blue line).  My guess is that for 10 minutes the road was closed in both directions.  Of course there was no warning of this, which doesn't really matter as the only alternate routes involved massive detours: via Badja adds on 93 km of crappy road and via Namadgi adds on 45 minutes (although only an extra 20km the road is again crappy).

Then, soon after turning on to the Monaro Hwy to Bombala, there was another bogan holding us up.  After 5 minutes I wandered up to ask how long the hold up would be and the response was "As long as it takes.  Ge back in your car, its dangerous."  He was advised that his attitude was dangerous to his continued employment - although given the attitude of the companies which do such contracts it would probably make him employee of the month. Total delay here possibly 6 minutes.

Getting on to Imlay Rd we found a log truck going our way, but he was moving right along and once there was a straight bit flicked his indicators suggesting he wanted me to go past, in which I obliged.  These drivers, on this road at least, are always very thoughtful.

We got to the road block with two cars close behind us (I'd been driving on the speed limit, always a good start to a traffic jam) and two being serviced.  The service recipients soon cleared out and a cop looked at Frances iPad, showing the permit.  All quickly and pleasantly resolved.

On getting home we found the vegetables had been growing!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A tour of the West (part 1)

Image
A friend from my time in the UN sent me some photos of her family trip along Route 66.  They did this is a large camperwagon rather than a Chevy Corvette (apparently the kids jacked up about being offered a trip in the trunk).  It seems to have been a very good trip for them and most interesting to see their photos.  It was also educational for me, as I found out the German for rocking chair (schaukelstuhl, since you ask). They did 7200 miles in 30 days - a pretty serious bit of distance. This made me think of the trips we did in 1981 when living in Denver.  Frances initiated that idea by getting a book about the National Parks of the West  and marking interesting places.  I then worked out a route on a Rand-McNally Road Atlas (GPS was unknown then  - as were iPhones, personal computers and the internet).  From memory, taking nearly the whole Summer school holidays we covered about 10,000 miles in 70 days.  Here, approximately,  are our routes: That map comes from Google Maps (G
Read more

Insects from pine trees

Image
This afternoon (13/1/2015) we were looking out of our sunroom and noticed a strange bit of mist.  On getting my binoculars on the case I found it to be a cloud of tens of thousand of insects.  They appeared with naked eye to be flying away, but with binoculars I thought they were circling. Here are some images In the second one it may be possible to see there are two streams coming from the top of each tree. There was a loud buzzing noise but that could just be several thousand wings. Earlier in the day Frances had been to some nearby willows and they were infested with many little black soft bodied insects.  Perhaps they shifted to the pines and were swarming? Help!! Any information welcome. A colleague, from Wamboin, had noticed a similat phenomenon, but involvng eucalypts rather than pines!  Here are the photos he took with his phone. I have consulted some expert friends.   Their responses were: I would have gone for chironomids. I recall years ago driving al
Read more

Maslins beach rules

Image
Anyone who was in Adelaide in the 1970s will be having a good nudge nudge at that title.  However the beach is really nice even though it is the haunt (in Summer ) of naked people.  (As an aside one of the 'van park staff was talking to some other guests and commented that the sights on the beach in Summer were not at all exciting.)  In April it is the haunt of seniors, many of them exercising their dogs, and thus a far more attractive place. Getting to the beach was a walk of about 1km along roads, from our van.  The second half of this went past a rather daggy looking paddock with many formed ridges in it, as though it was irrigated, although a water sources wasn't evident.  The paddock got interesting towards the end as some green parrots appeared.  Thanks to Frances eye for detail we have subsequently identified these as Elegant Parrots: my first lifer for 2014.    The locale is indicated by the red lines in this mudmap: Here are the birds: The view from the top of
Read more