Adventures in the Land of Oz by Aitken Alexandra;

Author:Aitken, Alexandra;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
Published: 2019-01-28T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6: Exploring the Land of Oz

One of my new-found Australian friends suggested that we spend a few days up on the Gold Coast and also see the sights of Brisbane. I never needed any persuasion to pack a few things in a bag and head off to somewhere new. However, reading this, you could be fooled into thinking that we were going for just a wee run in the car. The distances in Australia are incredible and what my friend proposed was to drive nearly 500 miles to get to Brisbane…and then back again a few days later. The Australians are used to the distances and I soon became accustomed to driving 90 minutes into the city just to see a movie or visit the theatre, at least twice per week, and never thought anything of it. In Scotland, I wouldn’t go from Perth to Edinburgh twice a week to see a movie and that is only 45 minutes’ drive away!

We usually travelled in my friend’s car as she was the more experienced driver on Aussie roads. The Australians drive on the same side as us and the road rules are fairly similar, however, I was still not accustomed to driving the long distances. My friend loved driving and you always knew when she had arrived at my aunt’s house as there would be a great cloud of dust from which her car would emerge. She liked to drive at great speed down the driveway kicking up stones and dirt in her wake. However, I was a little nervous when out with her after we had a nasty encounter with a HUGE Australian truck on a previous outing.

We were going to the city one afternoon and were following one of those monstrous trucks that I have only ever seen in Australia, when suddenly it moved out into the middle lane of the road. Without giving much thought as to why it had moved to the middle of the road (it had used no indicator lights), my friend saw it as an opportunity to pass the truck on the inside and take the left turning as we had planned. But just as she started to accelerate, imminent disaster loomed. The truck started to turn into the side road on our left, meaning it was cutting in front of our car and we were about to go right under it! My friend just seemed to freeze; I pulled the steering wheel to the left hoping we would hit the truck from the side. She was screaming that we were going to collide with several wooden posts on the left-hand side of the car, however, that seemed irrelevant when all I could see were the newspaper headlines about two females being decapitated under a truck! Our car bounced and banged to an eventual halt on some grass and I realised we were not going to die. A car coming out of the side road had witnessed the whole thing and signalled to

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