Travel Notes - Look Both Ways Before You Cross the Street, and Then Run Like Hell

 

 

We are in Perth Australia now, but let me digress with a brief travel essay ...

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The way people cross the street has a lot of variation from place to place.  In other words, when you want to cross a road, do drivers stop for you or, do they ignore you, or speed up or ... well, what do they actually do?

On this particular journey, we have experienced a wide range of reactions from drivers.  For example, when you step off a curb (or kerb in "proper English"), what should you expect to happen?  

As a long time runner, I have learned to never expect someone to stop for you.  I'm always careful to wait to see what a car and driver are going to do.  But it varies from place to place.  Part of it is cultural. 

And another issue; what sort of provision have the local authorities made for you to cross the street?  Is there a crosswalk?  A walking signal?  A little green man on the traffic light to indicate you can walk now?

We have run the gamut of reactions, and I will describe them as follows:

1.  The drivers in Tahiti are the most respectful of walkers that I have ever seen.  If you even stick a toe into the street, the drivers will come to screeching halt immediately.   It was almost weird how quickly they ALWAYS stopped to allow you to cross. 

2.  How much people walk - the amount of locals that walk to get somewhere - has a big effect on how much drivers will stop at cross walks.  The more walkers, and the more common it is to walk, the better your chances to cross a road (or be allowed to).  If people don't walk much, they ain't gonna stop. 

3. Australians are frankly terrible not very good at giving way to pedestrians.  There are no crosswalks at most intersections, so you have to make a run for it whenever you can.  And they don't stop!  You'd better be pretty good at estimating your chances, because the failure to plan means you're planning to fail.  Death is not a good alternative. 

I said to Fiona at one point "pedestrians have no rights to cross a street here in Australia, your only right is to die!"   Okay, maybe that's a bit strong ... 

4.  And another challenge is that here in Australia (and New Zealand too) they drive on the other side of the road, like British style.  So when you cross the street, you have to look the other, opposite ...  what seems like the ... wrong way.  It's very counter intuitive.  You have to be on your toes!  Pay attention!  Your life depends on it!

5.  One rather fascinating style of crossing streets took place in New Zealand.   At most major intersections, they shut down the whole shootin' match and everybody just starts crossing in whatever direction they please.  It takes some getting used to.   It's kind of fun to watch, like controlled chaos, but it works, and it's pretty efficient.  

I captured a video of this impressive procedure:

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So we are now in the far west corner of Australia. There are six states in Australia: Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia, and - Western Australia - where we are for the next few days

Western Australia is one of the more remote parts of the world.   Australia in general is a fairly remote place and hard to get to. 

But in this corner, it's one of the remotest parts of a remote country.  And candidly I did not expect to encounter what we found here in Perth.  It's much larger and more modern that I thought.  (I'm not sure what I expected, but not this)  

It's a large city, over two million, and seems rather affluent, as a result of natural resource extraction, like mining.  It's right on the west coast of the nation, on the Indian Ocean.  The weather is fantastic and the people are friendly and so far it's been one of our favorite spots on the trip. 

There is a major wine region here also, Margaret River, where we find ourselves tonight.  

Anyway, I've chosen to include a few pictures of the Perth region.  


We went to the Gold Museum here, also an example of natural resources here.  They had a big gold rush in the 1870's which attracted a lot of people and the population grew dramatically. 


I was able to pick up a replica of the largest fold nugget ever found, in a distant part of Western Australia.   The original was over 150 pounds.  

And check out this bad boy, a giant solid gold coin that weighs a ton!  It's worth like 60 million dollars - and it was real!  

And you can weigh yourself to see how much you are "worth your weight" in pure gold.  Quite a lot it turns out. 

Most of cities in Australia have done a good job with maintaining a strong sense of outdoors, even in the city, with great parks and green spaces. 

We are looking forward to the next couple days here as we get further out into the more remote regions of Australia. 










Will the drivers give you a chance to cross?