Day Ten and counting.

We drove up to a place called Lancelin yesterday – our first attempt to see a bit of rural Australia. huge roads – sections of it variously like driving through England, Eaglesham Moor and Spain.. but strangely fused together into one. We had to stop at the side of the road every now and then to grin like maniacs, and take pictures of the car:

One thing we have noticed pretty regularly since getting here – despite the aussie reputation for being laid back, they are even further down the old “Police state” path than the UK – everything is illegal… and has a sign telling you that it’s illegal. The road signs are insane – they have completely arbitrary signs for no right turn, no left turn, no u turn, no parking, no stopping, no looking, no smiling (okay, I made the last two up).

Seriously though, check this thing out:

That means no parking to the left of the pole (outside of the bays). no parking to the right of the pole at all (even in the bays). On the left of the pole, in the bays, you can park for 2 Hours (that’s what we think 2P means – you also see 1/4P and so on), during these times. Outside of these times, you can park anywhere you want.. including to the left of the pole. *except* If you have a resident’s permit, when you can park to the left of the pole any time you like, for as long as you like. But not on the right of the pole… can you guess I got a ticket?  😐

In Lancelin, as well as the delightful signs on pretty much every lampost (and this is a town smaller than Plockton’s Pub Car Park) they also have a huge sign that says “no camping – campers will be prosecuted”. There is a sign at the entrance to the town saying “Local Police are targetting…” and  a set of hooks where the topic that most irritates the local plod can be hung up, so that you can consider yourself warned. Yesterday, they has mostly been irritated by Speeding it seems.

We stayed in Lancelin for just long enough to write in the sand:

We then decided that we had better scarper – in case smiling, laughing or standing on the sand turned out to carry a jail sentence!

Back to Perth, where the locals are thankfully not all cousins and the signs are slightly more welcoming (we think) and picked up some meat for the barbie – we are mostly eating BBQ at the moment, but this is less to do with becoming true aussies, and more to do with the flat not having an indoors cooker… we are so looking forward to moving into our house!

Posted another cool video too – the 207 doing it’s convertible roof thing: