16 Driving

We knew that once we were living in Australia we would only be allowed to drive on our South African licences for 6 months so we had to do something about getting New South Wales licences. It entailed sitting a complete driving test which was a computer test and a practical on the road test. I had lost my South African licence a few days before we left and thought that the Road Traffic Authority (RTA) would accept the international licence that I had brought with me but they insisted that I produce my original South African licence. By the way when I say, “I lost my licence” I mean that I actually physically lost the plastic card not that I had had my licence taken off me by the police for some sort of driving infringement. When I realised that I needed that licence I had to ask Geoff Usher, the minister of our church in Hillcrest to collect it for me in Durban. I had applied for it before we left but it was not going to be ready for collection until after our date of departure and as I thought I would not need it again I had not bothered to collect it. The regulations are that one is supposed to collect ones licence in person but Geoff with my letter of authorisation was able to explain the situation and pick it up for me.

While I was waiting for it to arrive I used it as an excuse not to even think about sitting my test again. I was very nervous of the whole process. I did what I so often do, pushed Jonny out in front and got him to make the first move. We had both been driving for more years than we cared to remember but realised that things had changed since we first learnt to drive and that the rules of the road in Australia might differ slightly from those in Africa. We decided to get a little help and called on the services of a driving school. Jonny went for a few lessons with the first driving school that we used and they were terrible. The instructors were nether friendly of very instructive. Although Jonny is reluctant to blame them I feel sure that they contributed to the fact that he failed his test the first time he sat it.

By the time my licence arrived from South Africa Jonny had sat his test once again and passed. I was very nervous of the test and of the car. It was an automatic and I had never driven one before. Jonny helped me to get familiar with the car. I still felt that I needed some professional help but was not going to go back to the same driving school that Jonny had been to. In the telephone directory we found a school that advertised that they specialised in ladies and older people and as I was both we decided to call that number. A young woman called Iris owned the school and she was great. She was friendly and efficient and put me much more at ease. She taught me how to use the big double round-a-bouts that we have here in Australia but that I had never seen before. She also told me to drive a little faster as going slowly is not thought of as a virtue on the Australian roads and she said I could be failed for going too far below the speed limit and for dithering. After a few lessons she told me to book my test and I did not have any problems with the computer part of it. Then came the road test and I was a nervous wreck. On the morning of the test I went for a final lesson with Iris just before the test to “settle my nerves”. I had a terrible hour; I went over the pavement on the round-a-bout, could not do my reverse parking and almost went the wrong way up a one-way street. Iris took me back to the RTA for my test and said, “Don’t worry Marina you have made every mistake in the book this morning. You are bound to drive better than that for the examiner.”

When we left the RTA office the examiner asked me to do the usual checks on the car. He asked me to get in and turn on the indicators. I could not remember how to turn the indicators on and ended up turning on the windscreen wipers. I quickly realised my mistake and hoped that the examiner had not noticed. He did not say anything so I thought I had been quick enough to turn them off. I was so lucky to get such a nice friendly man. He told me to just relax and drive the way I normally did. He took me to a side road to do a three-point-turn; the road was so wide I could easily have done a U turn and not touched either of the kerbs. I did as I was told and did my three point turn and he made no comment what so ever. Then came the reverse parallel parking, I had done it so badly an hour before but I think my fairly godmother must have been there to help me as my car just slid into place without any effort. The examiner said, “Very good, now you can do what my wife does and drive round for hours looking for a diagonal parking rather than do a reverse parallel park, she never does one.” After we had driven around for a short while we went back to the offices again. The examiner said, “You’re fine, you drive very well and you did not put the windscreen wipers on once during the test”. I blurted out, “But I did when we were doing the car checks before we started.” He laughed and said, ”I know.” He had seen my mistake and I had thought he had missed it.

Then I had to have my photo taken to put on my new licence and although driving licence photos are like passport photos, notoriously bad, I was so happy to have passed my test I had a huge big grin on my face and it was rather a good photo of me.

15) Walking

The Skillion at Terrigal

As we were not very busy at this time we enjoyed ourselves exploring the area and walking on the beach. We started on Spoon Bay of course and walked first to the lagoon and then on to The Haven at Terrigal. Other times we walked north, climbing over the rocks and getting into Forresters Beach but the cliff comes down to the sea at the northern end of Forresters and blocked our passage so we could not progress any further along the beach Another day we drove to Bateau Bay, which is just north of Forresters, parked the car and walked from there along Shelly Beach, Toowoon Bay, Blue Bay and then on to The Entrance. It was a long walk and we were pretty tired by that time so we ate our packed lunch and then caught the bus back to Bateau to collect our car. We later discovered that there was a footpath over the cliffs from Forresters to Crack Neck Point which is almost at Bateau Bay and we love to walk there. The pathway is well maintained by the council so it is a fairly easy walk through lovely thick Australian bushland. There are huge trees, lots of birds and in spring and abundance of wild flowers. All this and wide views of the vast Pacific Ocean to the east. So all in all we can say that we have walked the whole coastline from Terrigal to The Entrance – not all in one go or all in one day of course, but we have done it all.

We studied our local map for places of interest and would often go walking. We found Katandra Reserve which is a lovely little patch of rain forest on the side of a hill overlooking Gosford. The walk was a bit steep and a bit longer than we had expected but it was so beautiful it really was worth it. The flora there is a little different from the rest of the surrounding area, very green and lush with many ferns and creepers.

A very different walk but another of our favourites is along the waterfront in Gosford. Here, on the Brisbane Waters, there are jetties, boat clubs and playgrounds so it is popular and there are many people there but it is very pleasant. We often park the car and walk along the waters edge. There is always something of interest to watch, the boats that are tied up at the jetty, one of the ferries coming or going, a sailing race from the Gosford Sailing club or just people out enjoying the day. We have always been impressed at the way Australian people use but do not abuse the facilities that are provided for them. In many of the beauty spots the council provides playgrounds for the children, tables and chairs, barbeque stands, cycle tracks pathways and toilets. We have found that they are generally in good condition and it is a pleasure to watch a group of young families having a day out together.

14) The Tax Man Cometh

At this time we were still mistakenly under the impression that our visa gave us permission to work so we contacted employment bureaus looking for jobs. Jonny went for a few interviews but it was pretty obvious that there were not many people who wanted a 66 year old boilermaker. Then one of the young ladies at an employment agency asked if our immigration visa gave us the right to work and we told her ‘yes’ as this is what we believed. She told us that we would need a letter from the immigration department stating that fact and we told her we would get one. We wrote to the department and immediately got a reply saying that we were not allowed to work. We had come into the country on a business visa and so we were only allowed to conduct a business and not allowed to get a job as such. We had thought that they had told us that we could work but I suppose looking back on it now they had meant that we would be allowed to work once our permanent residence was granted. So now we had to change our way of thinking and start looking for some form of business to do. The bowling machine that Jonny hoped to promote and get into the market was still on the high seas so we needed something else to do meanwhile.

We decided to find out what the income tax department required if we were to set up a contracting business and I phoned the head office. I was put through to a very helpful young lady who suggested that they send a representative around to our house to talk the matter over with us. I did not much like this idea as, lets face it, no one likes the tax man and I was nervous of such a meeting but she was quite insistent. I told her that we had not decided what we wanted to do and tried to wriggle out of it by saying that we did not want to be a nuisance but she was friendly but firm and an appointment was made.

A few days later a young man called to see us. He was so friendly and so helpful. He explained what we would need to do to set up a business. He told us how to go about it and was full of really good advice. He also gave us a computer programme that would help us to keep our records straight and fill in our Business Activity Statement once our computer arrived – and we had been dreading seeing him. Since that time we have always found that any dealings we have had with the Australian Tax Office have been very good. They have been friendly and helpful, explained what we needed to know and been patient with me when I did not understand any procedure. One could understand it if we were multi-millionaires paying huge amounts of tax that could make or break the Australian economy but the small amount we would be paying was hardly worth collecting. I am sure that not everyone would agree with me about the Tax department but I think they are great.

13) Shopping

Once we were living on our own we began to find out what life in Australia is really like. I found the shops a bit of a nightmare. First of all there are just so many of them, there seems to be a big shopping centre around every corner and in each centre there were far too many shops. Mostly they have two supermarkets each. Woolworth’s or Coles being the most common ones. Once one has made up ones mind which to use, which is hard, as they all seemed much the same to me, one goes in and is immediately faced with the fruit and veg counters. They are mind boggling, ten types of lettuce, five or six kinds of cabbage, carrots as big as my arm, apples that literally shine, cherries, strawberries, plums, nectarines, peaches, oranges, mangoes, melons, paw-paw, grapes, pineapples, pears, litchis, bananas (all about 12 inches long), there are about four kinds of tomatoes, potatoes that are unwashed some that have been washed and others that have been scrubbed by the look of them. There are many fruit and vegetables that I have never seen or even heard about before. Everything looked so good I wanted to just spend all our money there and become a vegetarian but I don’t think Jonny would appreciate that and so I pressed on. There are so many kinds of everything that it is hard to decide what you want, milk of all kinds, loads of cold meats, fresh fish and prawns and all sorts of seafood. The meat is good and pretty cheap if one does not convert dollars to rand, but more about that later. The only thing I was not been impressed with was the bread, the supermarkets only seem to sell cotton wool bread and one has to go to the bakery shops to get half way decent bread.
I was also very puzzled by the way the supermarket shelves are laid out. It just didn’t seem logical to me. I can’t for the life of me work out why baked beans are not amongst the tinned vegetables but they are always next to the tinned spaghetti. I know they both come in tomato sauce but that is the only common factor as far as I can tell. One would expect to find flour near the baking products but it is often on another shelf far away. Peanut butter is not always with the spreads and things like that, it does make it difficult if you don’t know the place, but I am getting the hang of it now I just hope they don’t go and move everything now that I have learnt where things are.

They don’t have packers in the supermarkets as we had in South Africa, the check out girls have to pack everything but they do have the plastic packets held open on stands and they just scan everything and pop it straight into a bag and they are pretty good, one does not get ones detergent in with ones butter ever. They also weigh the fruit and veg at the till. I spent ages on my first trip to the supermarket looking for someone in the green grocery department to weigh, bag and mark my veggies, they way it was done in South Africa.

It was a bit difficult to work out if things were cheap or expensive. When we first got here we converted everything to Rand and multiplied it all by five (the exchange rate) so everything seemed quite dear. Bread is $2.60 multiply that by five and your paying R13 for a loaf of bread. Petrol was $1.10 a litre x 5 is R5.50; our rent was $240 a week (about R4800 a month). Lamb $4.50 a kilo x 5 still cheap at R22. Tomatoes $4.50 a kilo, bananas $2.90 a kilo, potatoes $4.80 a five kilo bag. Butter $2.50 a kilo and margarine about $2.80 a kilo so guess what we are eating. We saw semi skilled jobs advertised in the paper paying $18 an hour and worked out that as they worked a 40 hour week it added up to $684 a week or almost $3000 a month. If one converts that to Rand by multiplying by five as the exchange rate was when we first came here one gets R3420 a week or about R15000 a month and we were sure that semi skilled workers in South Africa were not getting anywhere near that amount. We realised that we would have to give up using the exchange rate as a way to decide if something was expensive or not and found that for the most part we could just forget about the exchange rate and think of a dollar and a rand as being equal. This is not so easy when each of the Australian dollars that one is spending have been paid for with five South African Rand. It is only when one is earning money in this country and one can forget about the Rand. I remember that at the time Jonny and I decided that except for housing, Australian people did not have to work as many hours as their South African counterparts to buy the things that they need and looking back to what we paid for things six years ago when we first arrived I can see that the inflation here is nowhere near as bad as it was in South Africa. There was a huge spike in the petrol price a while ago but that has dropped again and most of the prices quoted above are fairly close to what we pay now.