Melbourne Australia January 2026

 Travail:

It's been horrible lately, driving to work. I live 40km from work, out in the West of Melbourne.

For the least few years there has been great work done on the Westgate Tunnel to alleviate the traffic from the great West, but the day they finished the tunnel, which isn't useful to me but could take some of the traffic density away to Docklands and the central City, the Road Works folk start 10 days of working on the Westgate Bridge itself, making 5 lanes into 2 lanes. It's an annual thing they do.

So, the journey that used to take one hour to cover the 40km of freeways now takes about 3 hours. Grinding delays. Then, when cars escape the jams, they crash into each other. Thus more delays.

So, I'm grateful to have tomorrow off as annual leave, the last day of Bridge upgrades. (But what traffic manipulations are next? Who knows. Something is planned, I'm sure)

For a long time now the only difference between Melbourne traffic and Bangkok traffic, is that Bangkok has more Toyotas and Melbourne has more Teslas, but they equally block up the travel corridors. And Australians don't cope well with the savant sinuousness required to get through Bangkok traffic. When the road is clear, here, everyone just crashes into each other.

Melbourne drivers are much better than, say, Queensland drivers, and everyone observe the road laws here (for fear of really unbelievably massive fines), but, if the sign says 100kph, then that's exactly what people drive at, whether there be rain, ice, accidents, fog, anything...they just keep rushing along.

So, I am relieved to have tomorrow off.

All my life, like my Dad, I've loved driving, but no more.

Last week I was in a 5 car crash, in the middle of it, and the car behind, a ute, took out my rear parking and turn lights. This pushed me into the electric Kia in front, and I must admit my iron bull bar did its job and basically destroyed the Kia. I got a migraine and another hours delay. Damage to my ute was a need to replace 2 parking/turning lights, and you can just buy them anywhere for the Ute I have, and cheap.

The old purely mechanical 2015 Nissan Navara 4WD D22 turbo diesel, remains a remarkably strong and capable vehicle. It goes well, doesn't break down, It's strong and stable and boring. It's just a light truck that does well anywhere, and can cross lots of land without any roads with ease, if necessary. The fuel costs are the same as a comparable small Volvo, so not a lot, and servicing is cheap.

Glad to have a Holiday tomorrow. We even washed the truck for the first time in years just the other day. Goes even better now. I will have to check the water and oil and tyre pressure in it one day. It's been a few years.