BACK IN OZ II

I HAVE BEEN BACK in the land of my birth just over two weeks now. There is not a lot to report. The time has been filled with renewing ties with family and friends. I had a great time meeting up with two friends from graduate school days. The one, Lorraine, I have kept in touch with over the years but the other, Janice, I had not seen for over 25 years. The last time in Melbourne when I visited with her while her son, Daniel, barely three years of age, was raking up autumn leaves. "Mummy," he kept complaining, "the leaves keep on falling." Now he is a grown man and she has raised two daughters since! We lunched while looking across Darling Harbour.

Unfortunately, by the end of the first week, I had come down with what Aussies call a "wog". A bad cold that peaked with a feverish Friday night followed by a Saturday filled with aches and pains. However, I continued the hunt for a second hand car, ably assisted by my nephew. Besides being over six feet and a qualified auto mechanic, his deliberate and careful examination, with lots of note taking and use of lifting devices and stands, certainly impressed the owners of the two cars we had selected. I bought the second, a Volvo 850 of 1997 vintage and some 169,000 kilometers and in very good order. So now I have a car although the transfer of registration had a few kinks to it, due to me not being a resident of New South Wales.

Yes, I proven that I can drive on the left hand side. Driving in Sydney can be a challenge as the streets are narrow, the lanes just wide enough for a car, and the traffic always very dense. On the other hand, the drivers are amazingly tolerant and considerate, accommodating sudden lane changes without signals with out so much as a turn of a hair. Sydney is full of traffic lights and long delays waiting for the green light. A fortune burnt at intersections as cars idle patiently. Also, the growth of the city has been dominated both by history and by the invaginations of the sea as the coast intrudes into the land. Hence you need a map book of the suburbs to fin.d your way around. The book I have has some 480 maps! It pays to study your intended route carefully before setting out and to mark the maps you will need to refer to as you wind your way across the city and suburbs. Tolerant as they may be in most respects, Sydney drivers have little patience with those who seem not to know their way.

Anther week on and I am just about over my cold (seems it is going around and mostly affecting folk who have recently been on planes). Tomorrow, I set out for Canberra and yes, I have been carefully studying how to get out of Sydney, from Bondi Beach where I am staying with my son and his family, to the main highway south to the Australian Capital Territory. I now have a GPS so should not loose my way or, if I do, find it again easily. I will be avoiding the network of tollways as it is difficult to pay electronically or in cash and they are very expensive.

From Canberra I will wend my way around Northeastern Victoria, visiting friends and looking at property and plan to arrive in Melbourne by next weekend. From there I will travel to Adelaide via the Wimmera area in Western Victoria to visit with an old friend I have not seen for many, many years, now a Baptist pastor serving three country congregations in that area.

In two weeks, I shall be in Adelaide.

Nothing else of interest, so...so long