Vehicles

For those of you who don’t know, in Australia they drive on the right side of the road. This is fairly nerve shaking at first as you watch the bus you’re in deliberately hurtle itself down the wrong side of the highway. But there’s more to it than that. In the airport in Darwin I felt like I was constantly pushing against the flow of pedestrian traffic, only to realize that of course I was, since we tend to walk on the same side that we drive. When your boss says “climb in, I’ll drive you over,” if you instinctively move to the right side of the vehicle, you seem a little presumptuous. Also, even after several years of driving a standard vehicle, it’s disorienting to try to shift with your left hand. At first I worried that even the pedals would be switched, but thankfully they are not. Even more disorienting is trying to gauge the spatial relationship between the vehicle you are driving and the gate you are attempting to pass through when you are sitting on the wrong side. Fortunately the only main road out here has only one lane and almost no traffic, and beyond that, it’s a whole world of red dirt roads, so hopefully this will be less of an issue than it would be in a more densely populated area.

Like ranchers the whole world over, Australians love their trucks. However, unlike in the US, where the Ford/Chevy/Dodge debate is a heated one, here there is only one kind of pickup – the Toyota. In fact, they don’t even call trucks “trucks,” they just call them “Toyotas” the way we call tissues “Kleenex.” They are smaller than their American counterparts and have a rugged look about them that would only ever be appropriate in the Outback or on the Savannah. They make you want to go on Safari. Toyotas have two gigantic spotlight-type headlights in the front attached to the brush guard (here call a “bull bar,” pronounced “boo bah”). My FAVORITE part of Australian vehicles, however, is the snorkel. It is exactly what it sounds like. It looks like a tiny smoke stack sticking out of the hood at the right corner of the “windscreen.” It’s function? To ventilate the engine when driving through water over 3 feet deep. Which begs the question- Can you even drive through water that’s over 3 feet deep, snorkel or otherwise? Given that that much water is typically accompanied by an equal amount of thick, slippery red mud, I remain skeptical.

However, if it’s possible to drive through, the Australians will try it. They drive as if they were born with the skill, and in fact that’s very near to the truth. On my first afternoon here, Felicity, the ranch matriarch, came to pick me up in a tiny, prehistoric Land Rover with her 2 children. The catch? Tom, age 10, was driving. He’s so short that they had to strap a block to the clutch so that he could reach it, but apparently he’s considered qualified. I was astonished. When I voiced this surprise I was informed by Lucy, age 8, that she could also drive but wasn’t quite strong enough to shift by herself yet. Wow. Makes me feel like I got a late start.