You Turn, I Turn, We All Turn!

Driving in Australia ain’t easy.  Trust me.  I had to make five u-turns today while driving through Perth.  And it isn’t just because they drive on the left side of the road here.  That’s actually the least of your worries.  Let me explain by means of a few “lessons learned” from my last 11 days on the road in WA.

They hide the road signs.  It’s not that they hide all the road signs, only the ones you need.  You’ll be driving along the freeway, merrily counting off the kms until the town you want to visit, when suddenly you realize your destination is no longer listed on any of the recent road signs.  It turns out that to get to your destination you wanted to exit on Thomas Road.  The only problem is, there is no sign to tell you that you need to exit on Thomas Road!  It’s only when you’ve already exited and are at the top of the offramp that, if you’re lucky, there’s an arrow pointing you in the right direction.  That’s gotta be worth at least a couple u-turns a day.

The road signs are pretty well useless.  Even if you are lucky enough to see a road sign, chances are it’s of no use to you.  This is because Australian road signs don’t use helpful notations like direction (i.e. North, or South).  Instead, they just list off random town names that happen to be in that general direction, and point.  The road you’re about to take may not even go to any of those towns! 

Even worse, they seem to choose which towns to post in a frustratingly haphazard manner.  Your destination may have been good enough to make the previous sign, but what to do at a roundabout where lots of towns you’ve never heard of and can’t see on a map are listed, yet yours isn’t?  You eventually make a u-turn.  That’s what.

Road numbers don’t matter.  You would think that once you are on a road major enough to warrant a road number that you’re pretty safe.  However, you would be wrong.  Australia assigns lots of numbers to lots of roads.  But Australia also reserves the right to remove that number at any time and without warning.  It’s not that you missed a turn or anything, the number just ceases to exist.  Even more exasperating, half way across the city the number simply reappears!  No explanations are given, no excuses made.  You simply curse the numbers and make yet another u-turn.

How about street names?  See road numbers, but assume even more randomness.  Turn around.

You can’t turn left on a red light.  Who knew?  The officer won’t be very sympathetic either when you tell him that at home in your country you are free to do the equivalent, a right turn, on a red light.  This doesn’t necessarily result in a u-turn, but it certainly adds to the frustration.

So there you have it, the main reasons for me having to complete six u-turns today.  I know I said five earlier, but I missed my turn driving home from dinner and had to make another one.