Seen through the eyes of someone who learned to drive on the right side of the road, driving on the wrong side is not that hard and feels very natural in a way. They do have some typical Australian traffic signs (everyone knows the kangaroo/koala signs), but there is one in Victoria I still have difficulties to understand correctly. The sign on the right means that you are allowed to park your car here at a 60 degree angle for 2 hours Mon to Fri between 7:30 and 17:30 and on Sat between 7:30 and 12:30. All other times you're free to park here. Australian traffic is, although locals think otherwise, not too bad. Melbourne is 4 times as big as Brussels, but traffic is absolutely not that bad. Roads are in general broader (2 to 3 lanes is common on all main roads towards the City) and most important: traffic lights are completely different configured. It's too difficult to explain, but it seems to be working much better. And during rush hour it is not allowed to make certain manouevres. You can't leave a main road by crossing the opposite lane (in Australia it means you can't turn right at main intersections. i.e. you can't block traffic behind you). Seems a bit annoying (it is if you don't know it) but you learn to think that way pretty fast. Left-left-left = right. This is only possible because Melbourne is blessed with that unnatural street map layout. That's also the reason why it is absolutely impossible to get lost in this city. Streets that keep their name but reset the numbering when crossing a suburb border might be the biggest issue here. It also makes it easy to explain the route to follow to someone. Just start counting blocks. :) 
I like Australian traffic. It's a lot more easy going than back home. Speed limits are lower, there are less cars and trucks on the road and the infrastructure isn't too bad. Some of the roads are really good quality, others are not. I can only speak about roads in Victoria at the moment (but that will change soon) but I do have the feeling the government is doing his best to maintain the roads. And that is not a simple task. Australia is big and there are a lot of roads in remote places. In rural areas only the town centre is paved, once off the main road all roads are unpaved. Maintained gravel roads if you're lucky, rocky dirt roads if you're not. I don't really mind what surface I'm driving on. They all have their (dis)advantages. On a side note. I reckon Australian economy is going downhill at the moment. They have elections here in September and apparently the election-sickness is happening here too! So politicians are going crazy, the press is jumping on it and people are becoming more end more indifferent. All economical investments are postponed, especially now because everyone expects a change of government and you never know what will happen then. Same shit, different place. I've got one interview for another Win7 deployment lined up next week. This time with a Victorian government agency. Don't know what it will give, but up until now I didn't had very good experiences with interviews... Anyway, the role would start July 1, so I'm thinking of doing a little road trip to Darwin. I've got about 16 days to do 7500km. Should be possible, don't you think ? p.s. You also may have notices that I do not longer use picasaweb to store my pictures. I've changed to flickr. They give you 1 TB ! I just need to find a way how to update this wordpress blog so it redirects to my flickr account. posted via: http://www.dew4chter.be/blog
