This is mostly a writing blog. I sometimes write about my life, my choices and today I have chosen to write a piece of my surprise trip to Melbourne. As you can probably judge by the title, I had a fantastic time… actually, I did. But I think if I had gone anywhere else, it would have been a better time. Not that I am not grateful for the trip, it was a pleasant surprise given to me for my birthday from my lovely girlfriend. She intended it to be a stress free getaway… how little she actually knew.

It was Friday, May eleventh and the sun was shining. It was a beautiful day and the heat beamed in through the windows to wake me from my slumber. As I work nights, the inevitable daylight always stings first, and warms later. I rolled out of bed wearing my newest pair of “comfy pants”, sworn never to leave the house. I hate sweatpants with a passion, however these are like wearing clouds, so I finally made the exception. I grabbed my iPhone and checked the time. Damn, I always sleep in. One of the worst parts about working nights is the wind down time after work, which leads into midday starts. I shook my head, disappointed in myself once again that I couldn’t get up before noon.

I staggered zombie-like to the kitchen and contemplated breakfast. Then I considered getting the mail. After all, I’ve been waiting for my security clearance check from Canada for the purposes of applying for my permanent residency visa here. It seems to be taking forever. After bouncing the ideas back and forth finally I turn from the front door and head back to the kitchen. The mail isn’t going anywhere. That is when my day began sliding downhill.

I heard a loud bang and the squealing of brakes. The two combined are never a good thing. My body instinctively turned around, and what I saw was a white car with major front end damage. Without thinking I grabbed my cordless phone (which has almost zero reception inside the house) and forced myself into dialling triple zero against my natural instinct to dial nine one one. As I rushed out I relayed what I saw to the man on the other end. Luckily everyone was okay, but the lady driver of the white car began staggering down the side road and away from the accident. I told him I didn’t think an ambulance was needed, but we definitely needed the police and fire brigade as the large truck the white car had run into was leaking fuel.

I relayed all I could but as I rushed to head the woman off, my phone cut out. At this point my blood is pumping and I find myself trying to convince this lady to return to the accident. She refuses to return, as she tells me that she is too shaken up to be near the car. Her words say nothing of being too shaken to be near the car, but what ever she had been drinking at half past midday may have been quite shaken. The male from her car gets out and begins trying to distract me so she can run, but I stay in front of them. Then the man begins getting aggressive and I’m just not in the mood. He begins yelling at me, asking me why I’m keeping her there. I simply tell him I am first aid trained and she is suffering from shock. She needs to remain at the scene as well, as fleeing the scene of an accident is a crime. He gets really up in my face and screams, what are you a cop or something? My nerves surprisingly don’t back down and I issue him a statement: “Yes, now sit down and shut the hell up. Don’t make this worse for yourself.” He doesn’t slug me, but he has his doubts. Either way, he backs off completely.

Enter the driver of the truck. He comes over to give me his statement. I don’t give a hoot about his statement. I want the police to come, and now. Actually roughly what seems like an hour ago they’d have been handy. The male from the white car is listening more than I am and he begins to voice his opinion. I tell them all to calm down as I am not on duty and as I didn’t see anything I am solely a witness. I’m not there for statements. I send the truck driver to the curb and have to reposition myself back in front of the woman as she staggers further down the road. Finally I see the police car pull up, and the driver jumps out and looks around for the drivers. I flag him down with my ever so useless cordless phone and to my delight, he comes down to us. Things begin to slow down for me now, as he collects the couple from the white car and drives them back to the accident. I give my useless statement as I saw nothing, but I believe she would have run away from the accident had I not intervened. After waiting to see if they need me again, the lady jumps from the police car and begins running down the street. I turn to the officers and let them know she is getting away, to which they chase her down, cuff her and walk her back to the car.

After that ordeal I get home and it isn’t long before my girlfriend gets home. I was supposed to get one thing finished and one thing alone before she got home. The dishes. Now obviously one cannot predict a car accident, so I thought I was in the clear. However, I was in deep trouble. Upon her arrival she freaked out at the dishes around the sink. I told her not to worry about it as we could finish them after supper. She began cleaning them furiously and I shook my head. I’m not going to stress any more about today, I began to plan for a quiet night at home. My lovely girlfriend told me we were going out for a nice dinner and had to pick up my birthday present. I was fine with that, but I had my heart set on a quiet night. After dealing with drunk drivers and an aggressive, unpredictable stranger, I wanted to just crawl back into bed. However, unbeknownst to me… my girlfriend had other plans.

Enter the airport. Exactly the last place I had hoped to be was an area with screaming babies and chock full of people who all seem like their life could end at any moment, so they must blow past you as if you’re not there. I am feeling miserable for two reasons, I simply am not in the mood for a surprise of this magnitude and I just feel bad for my girlfriend. She couldn’t have predicted the accident, so I try hard to grin and bear it. As we sit waiting for the flight to Melbourne my girlfriend notices an ad for flights there being advertised for  forty dollars or so. She hangs her head as she paid a lot more for that. But that is travel, book in advance and miss the deals, but wait and miss going altogether.

The flight is late, but the happens so we laugh about the crazy drunken lady who I stopped earlier and my best police impersonation. We board,  I sit in the wrong seat as informed by the passenger who was supposed to be in that seat. Luckily the plane takes off and lands before I know it. My day is just… awesome. As we land a bit late too, we worry we may miss our connecting shuttle. My girlfriend had booked us a smaller shuttle from the airport directly to our hotel. We land fifteen minutes late, roughly quarter past ten in the evening and our shuttle is nowhere in sight. After everything else, we joke about adding it to the growing list of failures. I wait as she calls to confirm we are being picked up, and they assure us the driver should be there already. Especially considering the plane got in late. We shrug it off, she’s fifteen minutes late supposedly because she had to gas up. Fine, we really just want to get to the hotel. Sleep is calling and I seriously want off this roller coaster of a day. She says she has to pick up the next passenger, but we’d have to wait ten to fifteen minutes. Well, we’ve waited this long, so what is another fifteen minutes?

What is another fifteen minutes? Well, apparently in Melbourne time that translates out to roughly forty five minutes. She comes out to tell us roughly thirty minutes into the fifteen minute wait that he’s just waiting on his luggage. Fantastic. He finally shows and she brings him to the shuttle. She then informs us that we have to wait another ten minutes for the next passenger. My girlfriend nearly breaks down and tells her that isn’t acceptable as we have an early start the next day. I am mortified at the news of an early start, but it is to be expected if we are to get everything in. The lady apologizes but assures us it is out of her hands. The time now nearing roughly ten after eleven. After waiting an additional twenty five minutes, our driver returns sans passenger and grumbles something about him not showing. By this time we had watched roughly fifty of the airport public shuttles arrive and leave with passengers.

We arrive at our hotel at roughly twenty past twelve and by the time we check in and get our card keys, it’s pushing half past twelve. I try my card key. You have got to be kidding me. I try my girlfriend’s key. Both keys fail to open the door. I hang my head in agony as I make my way back to the elevator and down to the front desk. I miss Sydney. The gentleman at the front desk comes up as if we had used them wrong but has to use his master key to let us into our room. He is baffled by the luck we had, but we’re not. In fact, we just add it to the growing list of failures. As I lay down to sleep, she writes an angry email describing our experience to the shuttle company.

Sleep soothes the exhausted soul. I wake up with a slight crick in my neck, but it goes away fast enough. We rush out and make it to our car rental place for opening. The place is already packed with people, but we get through fast enough. The man talks us into an upgrade from a compact to a wagon, and from a manual to an auto. It’ll be better on gas I suspect, so I agree. So does their bank account, an extra thirty dollars. We shrug it off and get into the car. It’s not bad, roomy, clean and purrs like a kitten. Much unlike my bucket of bolts which idles so bad it would rattle your fillings out. We begin our journey, to the Great Ocean Road!

At first the day is mildly windy and a bit cold for Australia. I grow glad that I am Canadian as the cold here feels like nothing. We stop for some scenic views, take some pictures at at a beach and before we make it back to the car, the cold and wind are becoming a bit dramatic even for me. No one controls the weather, but as we pull away we watch as the forceful winds push a storm across the roads. Considering the wind, fog, rain and lack of sun, the drive is enjoyable, but sure as hell less scenic than I had imagined. We add weather to the growing list of failures. Absolutely incredible.

The next time we stop, so does the rain. We arrive in an area called Split Point, at first we’re hesitant to stop for just the lighthouse. But I decide, ah well, if I am a tourist I might as well play the part. We pass by a road with many people parked on the grass and follow a blue P to a small dirt road with a cul-de-sac at the end. We park at the end of the line at noon, right on the money, and we are making great time. We spend some time walking around the lighthouse grounds, and take some photos but the wind begins to whip up again so we had back to our car. As we pull away, we notice some rubbish on our windscreen. I tell the girlfriend to keep driving, until I realize it seems to be a note. We pull over at the end of the road and sure enough we got a ticket. One minute after twelve. The person probably literally watched us park and then walked over to give us a ticket. Very friendly. We add this to the list and a fine well over a hundred dollars really puts a damper on the day. I swear there were no signs saying we were parked incorrectly, in fact, we followed a parking sign to what we thought was parking! I vow to dispute it when we get home as it makes no sense.

The rest of the day is cold and rainy. In fact what we thought was fog was actually horizontal rain. Our pictures make us look like we are in the middle of a monsoon and we end up absolutely soaked. We drop the car back in its original parking spot, which is the only thing that apparently went right that day. Luckily the company makes the journey one hundred times better than it could have been and I can’t imagine surviving this trip on my own. My spirits would have been crushed when the card key wouldn’t open the door, but luckily we didn’t have to do it alone.

The next day we meet my girlfriend’s uncle for breakfast, and he is an Aussie actor. He’s been in many movies and was staying at his friend’s house. His friend was one of the three original agents in the Matrix. This was a cool fact, and one I smile upon still. As we walked to a small sidewalk breakfast bar, we noted the rain was once again kicking up a stink. We order our breakfast and it comes awhile later, a time which seems to be too long. No one is fully happy with the wait, nor their meal, although the spicy sausage in my breakfast meal has me tearing it apart like a lion eating a gazelle. I leave the dissected husk on my plate, much to my girlfriend’s chagrin . He then takes us to a community owned and run garden in the middle of the town. It is an excellent use of space and the area is beautiful. The concept is something most cities wouldn’t consider, so I give it some bonus points.

After that we head back into the town for some shopping and sight seeing. We don’t really find anything too fantastic to buy although walking around the city has been fun. We stop in for some lunch, and then we head to our shuttle bus meeting spot. We are heading to see the fairy penguins! As I had only seen penguins in captivity, this was the big draw for my birthday going to Melbourne. I had been super excited to see them ever since I arrived, almost more than kangaroos and koalas. I mean really, how often does one see a penguin!? So the shuttle drove us from Melbourne to Philip Island. A gloomy drive that I was glad neither of us had to drive for. The wind and rain pelted the bus in waves. We arrived and hurried to get some good seats down by the beach where the penguins were scheduled to come in.

The darkness swoops in, but the rain and wind beats it to the beach. As the rain comes in horizontally, and the wind chills you to your very soul, it was no surprise that we both ended up with colds. However, we watched the penguins come in. This would be ultimately the highlight of my stay in Melbourne (and keep in mind, it was at Philip Island, NOT Melbourne). I mean honestly, how can anyone stay mad when penguins come waddling up over the rocks and stop to clean themselves. There is no noise cuter than penguin sounds, and they sound like a cross between a pigeon and a kitten. Just imagine a purr being delivered as a coo. But not too loud to be annoying, oh and remember, it’s coming from a penguin. As we followed the penguin parade up to the main house we stopped to examine the small groups that were making their way slowly to their homes. I slept fantastically that night, and couldn’t argue that I had a great time. I mean, come on, they’re penguins!

The next day was entirely looking around the city, we toured the jail (spelt gaol if you’re Australian), rode around on the free tram and made our way to some shopping centres and eventually made it back to our hotel. We would be leaving the next day so we made plans to check out a few places and then left our bags at the hotel. The day was fun, but we didn’t actually find anything to buy and we were both starting to get tired. My feet were sore from the dress shoes I had worn (remember, originally I thought we were going just out for a nice dinner) but overall the trip was ending off on a decent note. We managed to get a refund from our shuttle on the first day and the shuttle was directly on time and took only us directly to the airport.

After bidding Melbourne a heartwarming farewell, I was glad to be heading back toward Sydney. Even though I am not a fan of huge cities, it felt strangely like… coming home. We arrived and as we walked through the doors I noticed a car park shuttle driving by. I extended my hand, as if I could somehow force it to stop while yelling, “Noooo!” and suddenly it stopped and he waved us in. As we hopped on he said I just looked so disappointed, but I was grateful and may or may not have called him a legend. We got to our car and drove to pay for parking when the guy realized we had paid to park in a different lot. He shrugged and told us not to worry about it, he’d get it sorted. We were glad we wouldn’t have to argue that one, and decided to stop at MacDonald’s for just some snacks to make the trip home easier. My girlfriend came back with the food and said apparently their debit wasn’t working, so they just gave it to us. What felt like Melbourne rejecting us over and over was completely undone by the sheer kindness of everyone upon arriving in Sydney. It was good to be welcomed back like that!

As for my parking ticket, upon arriving home I began to request an inquiry into the ticket itself. They state that I can contest it, and send me a photo of the car and a car length away was a single sign. The sign apparently has no end, therefore the entire road must be a no stopping zone. In the picture you can clearly see that I am parked next to another vehicle who was also parked at the end of a long line of cars. As we pulled in the sign wasn’t near where we parked, so we didn’t even notice it. Also if the ticket was indeed issued exactly one minute after we got there, why were we not informed, we would have greatly appreciated mention of the damn sign and moved elsewhere or most likely, have continued on.

I contested the ticket and lost. I argued that all “zones” should have a definite end, a no stopping zone on a curb could be as long as the curb, but even that ends. On a cul-de-sac where parking is allowed on one side of the road, why did they choose to place the singular no stopping zone sign right at the end of the road? In a perfect world, everyone should stare directly ahead. But then how the hell would you find a parking spot?! I still do not understand why there is no end to their no stopping zone. Most zones in the city have starting and ending signs and as does parking. The vagueness of the no stopping sign and its placement directly at the end of the road feels more like a trap than an actual traffic sign. I believe if the road was paved, marked or even sign posted better these fines would not happen. However, as I contested it they also say you can only contest it once and now they are demanding I pay up or take it to court. As much as I would have a fantastic case in court, they know that the cost of the ticket is less than legal fees so I am blackmailed into paying up. Thanks for the stupidly expensive souvenir oh and good riddance.

At the end of the day though, I can check heading to Melbourne and seeing the fairy penguins off the old bucket list. Also I know my girlfriend loves me lots to have planned such an incredible trip and manage to keep it a secret for so long. Do I regret going to Melbourne? No. But not because it was Melbourne. No, it was because I have the best girlfriend in the world and together… we survived Melbourne.