Australian Adventures

As my book approached its launch day on FRIDAY, I wanted to thank all the people who have reacted to my first posts on LinkedIn. It was so nice to catch up with so many people I have met all round the world. I did a good few trips to Australia as I tried to persuade Australian utility companies to buy an ADMS system. I have had comments from all over Australia, and it reminded me of one of my trips….

In 2010 I drove from Melbourne to Sydney with a whole load of colleagues and two car loads of computer kit along the Hume highway. My colleagues delight in reminding me that I dented the hire car before we left the hotel car park, in fact BOTH hire cars, because I reversed my one into the front of the one behind me.

Figure 1. You can hardly see the dent

We were preparing for a smart grid presentation in Sydney, so there was a team of about 8 of us between the two cars of kit. We stopped for breakfast and it was the first (and only) time I have seen a breakfast of bacon, sausage pancakes AND ice cream on the one plate ( Paul B?).

Figure 2. Proof Positive

Presentations and demo done over an intense few days and the team are flying off to their respective homes in UK /USA / other parts of Oz,  but we still had one car load of computer kit to return to Melbourne…. Who will ?  Yeah,  I love driving in foreign countries and I offered to take the kit back.  This time on my own, I used up two days and drove the coast route south from Sydney, on the A1 Princes Highway, through Batemans Bay stopped overnight and then drove west through the amazing temperate forests of Errinundra National Park back to Melbourne.  I stopped to take photographs along the way and caught the sunset  in beautiful Batemans Bay.  I wanted to get further on before stopping for the night so I drove off, more in hope than certainty, about where I could find to stay in one of the townships further down the coast. I mean coastal towns full of tourists? Right ?  Wrong, I eventually found a room above a pub in a down and out settlement.  It was a dive.  I was awake up and out by 5 am before sunrise and before breakfast. I decided I wanted to watch the sunrise so turned off the A1 heading towards the coast and found a little woodland. It was not so much the site that attracted me but the time, the sun was almost over the horizon.  I parked up and looked for a spot to record the first rays of morning sun. As I sat on a boulder fiddling with my camera, I had a sudden alarm that something had moved in front of me. I looked up and it actually took a few moments to realise what it was, kangaroos, in the wild also grazing about in the woodland below me. I flicked my camera onto zoom and caught them as the first rays of morning dappled the trees with colour..  I was so excited that many of my photographs were blurred unfortunately but a few of them were usable.

Figure 3. Sunset on Batemans Bay, Sunrise surprise meeting kangaroos in the wild

It was a special moment and got me in the correct frame of mind to undertake the big drive….

I took a break  mid morning and saw a logging track disappear into the forest…. Just how far from the Tasman sea / Bass Strait could I be?  So I peeled off down the logging track (in the hire car complete with computer kit all boxed up in the back).  I easily did half an hour along that track going over crest after crest always expecting to see the sea over the next rise. Nope. Australia is BIG. But I did come up against a huge fallen tree crossing the track so I had to admit defeat and turn round and head back to the main road.  I have dozens of photographs of that forest, it was amazing, fallen logs in advanced stages of rotting. Beautiful highly colourful bushes in crimson red, looking spectacular in their setting of abundant growth and tree ferns .

I was back on the A1 to Melbourne cruising along without a care in the world. My flight home was on Saturday, I had tonight in my hotel I had stacks of time to return the hire car…. But ….. but it was full of computer kit !…… This HAD to be offloaded in the office before it closed at 5pm TODAY , FRIDAY.  I began to regret my little diversions and put the foot down.  What an idiot I was thinking, all that pleasant relaxing mood in my head disappeared replaced by agitation with myself, the oh so familiar race of distance and time.  Melbourne was still a long way off. I made it with 15 minutes to spare and offloaded the computers and went for a pint with the guys, drifting off into more well-earned relaxation.

It was three weeks later sitting at my desk in Scotland when I received mail from Australia.  Victoria’s finest were apparently taking a dim view of my speed approaching Melbourne, ahem, twice, 100 miles apart. I like Australia, I stumped up and I just knew it could NOT be merited as a legitimate business expense so it came off the personal account as a salutary reminder about the state of my driving and my ability to hold two conflicting issues in my head for soooo long without identifying the contradictions between them. Hey ho it leads to an interesting life.

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