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April 09, 2003
Driving in Canberra
I liked this entry on driving in Canberra. I remember being given driving instructions for Canberra by a resident expert. He said: "In Canberra, if you can see your destination, turn left" (or right). For non-locals, all of Canberra appears to consist of roundabouts and more roundabouts. Some are decorated with fountains, statues, and parliament house but they are still roundabouts (even the rectangular ones). Then they also have these fantastic clover-leaf roundabout things that go under where you were so that you can go where you weren't. Or something. Then there are these bridges that go over the lake but you can't cross the road and so you realize that if you want to be like the chicken, you had better turn left (or right).
So we found the tourist information office (well signposted, lots of parking) and asked them why there were so many roundabouts in Canberra. The quick reply: "Because all the big wheels like to go in circles".
Reminds me in turn of a security presentation many years ago by a defence type person who was talking about possible military targets in Australia like Sydney, Sydney, Sydney, Melbourne and Pine Gap. Someone asked about Canberra (which is where the briefing was being held) - the instant response: "What's in Canberra?". After some consideration this was modified to: "The only people that would want to target Canberra would be Australians not foreigners".
Back to the topic in question. In NSW, we copied the roundabouts but because we don't have so many big wheels, we made the roundabouts smaller. So small in fact that you can overlook them. Especially when they are only about 3 feet across - sort of looking like a poached egg in the middle of the intersection.
One of these, near Clovelly had a concrete witches hat in the middle of it. The main road ran along a spur with a moderate approach on one cross street and a very steep hill climb on the other. Some years ago, just after the intersection was converted to a roundabout, an old (and small) car had come rocketing up the steep bit and sort of bounced onto the witches hat. No amount of shaking or rocking could get it off and it was blocking the traffic so a couple of the local yokels were rotating it to allow the east-west flow and then stopping the traffic and swiveling the car to allow the north-south traffic. Quite entertaining really.
Posted by Ozguru at April 9, 2003 06:04 AM
Comments
Posted by: GDay Mate at April 9, 2003 06:04 AM
