How Not To Drive To Ballarat
Sep. 13th, 2008 08:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deird_ljI took the day off yesterday, and went to Ballarat - where I went to Sovereign Hill, and then visited the lovely ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
immer_am_lesen , who gave me dinner and a spare bedroom. We spent an enjoyable evening watching tv and feeding peanuts to a bunny.
But first, I had to get there.
This was not so easy.
Beginnings
I left my house at 10am, expecting it to take me an hour and a half to get to Ballarat.
An hour and a half later I was sitting in the middle of a field, howling at the top of my lungs.
Just for reference, my mental timeline was as follows:
9:00 - drop cat off with my parents, finish packing, and have a final, relaxing cup of tea
10:00 - leave the house, and drive along the freeway
10:30 - reach the city, and get onto another freeway for the journey out of town
11:30 - reach Ballarat, and enter Sovereign Hill just in time for an early lunch at the bakery
Got that?
Plotting Against Me
So, at 10am precisely, I left my house and drove onto the freeway.
The freeway was at a standstill.
The cars were bumper to bumper, and the snazzy electronic screen that gives you the Estimated Time To Reach Your Destination was predicting an hour and a half to reach the city. This could not be good.
I however, know my way around town, and am not fazed by such trifles. I simply got off the freeway at the next exit, and took a detour up Dandenong Road.
Dandenong Road was also at a standstill.
As was every road into the city. At one point, I spent fifteen minutes at a single set of lights. And I was getting slightly frustrated.
But I breathed deeply, and smiled, and firmly told myself "It's just traffic. It's not important, and it'll be fine soon anyway."
And indeed it was! Once I reached the city centre, the traffic cleared, and I was soon racing along the freeway, happily sure that I hadn't lost that much time...
Heh.
You know in The Truman Show, how he tries to leave the island, and suddenly there's traffic everywhere, and road blocks, and the forest is on FIRE, and everything in the entire town is doing its level best to make sure he can't get out?
Yeah... I think my city is plotting against me.
The traffic jam, however, had failed to stop me - so they moved on to the second part of their plan.
Missing Street Signs
I was, as I mentioned, trying to drive to Ballarat.
Now, for the out-of-towners in our audience, I'll try to explain:
There are four major towns in Victoria. In order from largest to smallest, they are
-Melbourne
-Geelong
-Ballarat
and
-Bendigo
Melbourne is where I live, and where my car was at this point in the story.
Geelong is west of Melbourne, Bendigo is north-west of Melbourne, and Ballarat is in the middle of the two.
Now, on the freeway going out of Melbourne, it very quickly splits in half - one side goes to Geelong (and the West Gate Bridge), and the other to Bendigo (and the airport).
And there were no signs about Ballarat.
I knew perfectly well that the west freeway might go to Geelong and Ballarat, or the north-west freeway might go to Bendigo and Ballarat, but I didn't know which, and Ballarat wasn't mentioned ANYWHERE.
This was a bit worrying.
A Wild Guess
I have, as it happens, driven to Geelong quite a few times, so I very quickly searched my memory, and tried to remember if I'd ever seen any bits of freeway heading to Ballarat. And I couldn't think of any.
So I turned onto the Bendigo freeway.
...and then turned off it again.
You see, I thought that, out of the corner of my eye, I might just have seen a Ballarat sign on the other freeway as I was turning onto the Bendigo one.
So, I started trying to figure out a way to turn around, and get back onto the Geelong freeway. And in the mean time, I called my mother.
Double Checking
Mum answered her phone while I was stopped at a red light, waiting for it to turn green so that I could start driving to Geelong. And I frantically asked her if I was right about Geelong, or whether I should have kept going up to Bendigo.
Mum wasn't sure, but she thought I should probably pick the Bendigo freeway.
So I turned around again, and got back on that one.
I was getting a bit stressed by this point.
Misdirection
The Bendigo freeway had thousands of helpful signs, talking about Bendigo, and the airport, and the Hume Highway, and so on. But there still wasn't anything about Ballarat.
I kept driving anyway, really hoping I'd picked the right one.
Anyway, halfway up this freeway, it split in two again.
One half went to the airport, and the other half went to the Hume Highway (neither mentioned Ballarat).
Now, geography isn't one of my best points, but I do know about the Hume Highway.
It goes from Melbourne up to Sydney. Which is north-east, and definitely not in any direction associated with Ballarat.
I stayed on the route to the airport.
By The Way...
There are, of course, other ways to find Ballarat apart from just looking for "Ballarat" on signs. You could also look for the name of the freeway leading to it - in this case the Western Freeway.
I can tell you, quite definitely, that none of the signs mentioned the Western Freeway either.
But moving on...
No Exits
So. Airport.
I didn't want to go to the airport, but I knew that the freeway kept going past it, so I figured I'd stay on it until it told me how to get to Ballarat.
The freeway does indeed go past the airport. For a couple of kilometres.
Then, it goes to Sunbury.
Sunbury is tiny.
Once I realised that I was heading to Sunbury, I knew that I obviously wasn't on the right road. And I started looking for a way to turn around, as fast as possible, so that I wouldn't lose any more time than I had already.
But the road kept going, and going, and didn't have any turn-offs - mainly because the airport was on one side, and the rubbish dump was on the other, so there was absolutely nothing to turn off for.
...and I kept driving towards Sunbury.
Despair
The first possible bit of not-freeway I saw was an emergency exit for part of the airport. It's used only in the case of a plane doing an emergency landing at the edge of the airport while the rest of it is on fire.
This rarely happens, so the exit is pretty much an overgrown bit of field.
And the moment I reached it, I drove in, parked my car, calmly, put the hand-brake on, calmly, and turned off the engine, calmly.
Then I screamed, as loudly as possible, before moving onto some very noisy crying.
I did this for several minutes, alternately between screams and sobbing, while planes zoomed overhead.
Timing
On the positive side, the electronic screen on my first bit of freeway had been absolutely correct: it had taken me an hour-and-a-half to reach my field, and I was still basically in Melbourne, and nowhere near Ballarat.
Instruction Manual
After indulging in some very therapeutic wailing, I pulled out a map.
... in retrospect, I probably should have done this earlier.
Apparently, to get to Ballarat, I needed to:
1) get on the Bendigo-and-airport freeway (like I had done)
2) turn off at the Hume Highway bit (oops)
3) turn off the Hume Highway into the Western Ring Road
4) turn off the Western Ring Road into the Western Highway
5) travel along the Western Highway until it became the Western Freeway
Signs mentioning Ballarat did not appear at all until I reached step 4.
(Weirdly, the only sign I saw mentioning Ballarat before this bit was on my way from Sunbury back towards Melbourne - which is the exact opposite direction to the one I needed to travel in.)
Success!
After my very canny map-using, I managed to find my way to Ballarat without any difficulty at all! (But with lots of yelling at random street signs: "Yeah, you go to Ballarat? You could have told me that EARLIER. Like, BEFORE I was actually three minutes from the edge of the town!")
And I had a wonderful (if late) lunch at the bakery, before tramping around Sovereign Hill looking at all the old stuff.
***
Brief interlude: Sovereign Hill, for those who don't know, is a big outdoor museum, set up as a replica of 1850s Ballarat - back at the height of the Gold Rush.
There are people in costumes, and gold panning, and horses, and old-fashioned houses (fully furnished), and mine tours. It's awesome.
***
There were quite a few school groups there - most of them dressed in period costumes. And I got to see the toffee-making demonstration, and some blacksmithing, but unfortunately missed the gold pouring demo.
...and History Repeats Itself
...because I got lost in Ballarat on my way out of town. I spent fifteen minutes driving around the streets, panicking, because I needed to get to the Glenelg Highway, and all I could find was the university.
(And yes - this time I was using my map. But the uni wasn't on it...)
*sigh*
One day, when I'm insanely rich, I think I'm going to hire a chauffeur. Or maybe just a private jet...
immer_am_lesen , who gave me dinner and a spare bedroom. We spent an enjoyable evening watching tv and feeding peanuts to a bunny.But first, I had to get there.
This was not so easy.
Beginnings
I left my house at 10am, expecting it to take me an hour and a half to get to Ballarat.
An hour and a half later I was sitting in the middle of a field, howling at the top of my lungs.
Just for reference, my mental timeline was as follows:
9:00 - drop cat off with my parents, finish packing, and have a final, relaxing cup of tea
10:00 - leave the house, and drive along the freeway
10:30 - reach the city, and get onto another freeway for the journey out of town
11:30 - reach Ballarat, and enter Sovereign Hill just in time for an early lunch at the bakery
Got that?
Plotting Against Me
So, at 10am precisely, I left my house and drove onto the freeway.
The freeway was at a standstill.
The cars were bumper to bumper, and the snazzy electronic screen that gives you the Estimated Time To Reach Your Destination was predicting an hour and a half to reach the city. This could not be good.
I however, know my way around town, and am not fazed by such trifles. I simply got off the freeway at the next exit, and took a detour up Dandenong Road.
Dandenong Road was also at a standstill.
As was every road into the city. At one point, I spent fifteen minutes at a single set of lights. And I was getting slightly frustrated.
But I breathed deeply, and smiled, and firmly told myself "It's just traffic. It's not important, and it'll be fine soon anyway."
And indeed it was! Once I reached the city centre, the traffic cleared, and I was soon racing along the freeway, happily sure that I hadn't lost that much time...
Heh.
You know in The Truman Show, how he tries to leave the island, and suddenly there's traffic everywhere, and road blocks, and the forest is on FIRE, and everything in the entire town is doing its level best to make sure he can't get out?
Yeah... I think my city is plotting against me.
The traffic jam, however, had failed to stop me - so they moved on to the second part of their plan.
Missing Street Signs
I was, as I mentioned, trying to drive to Ballarat.
Now, for the out-of-towners in our audience, I'll try to explain:
There are four major towns in Victoria. In order from largest to smallest, they are
-Melbourne
-Geelong
-Ballarat
and
-Bendigo
Melbourne is where I live, and where my car was at this point in the story.
Geelong is west of Melbourne, Bendigo is north-west of Melbourne, and Ballarat is in the middle of the two.
Now, on the freeway going out of Melbourne, it very quickly splits in half - one side goes to Geelong (and the West Gate Bridge), and the other to Bendigo (and the airport).
And there were no signs about Ballarat.
I knew perfectly well that the west freeway might go to Geelong and Ballarat, or the north-west freeway might go to Bendigo and Ballarat, but I didn't know which, and Ballarat wasn't mentioned ANYWHERE.
This was a bit worrying.
A Wild Guess
I have, as it happens, driven to Geelong quite a few times, so I very quickly searched my memory, and tried to remember if I'd ever seen any bits of freeway heading to Ballarat. And I couldn't think of any.
So I turned onto the Bendigo freeway.
...and then turned off it again.
You see, I thought that, out of the corner of my eye, I might just have seen a Ballarat sign on the other freeway as I was turning onto the Bendigo one.
So, I started trying to figure out a way to turn around, and get back onto the Geelong freeway. And in the mean time, I called my mother.
Double Checking
Mum answered her phone while I was stopped at a red light, waiting for it to turn green so that I could start driving to Geelong. And I frantically asked her if I was right about Geelong, or whether I should have kept going up to Bendigo.
Mum wasn't sure, but she thought I should probably pick the Bendigo freeway.
So I turned around again, and got back on that one.
I was getting a bit stressed by this point.
Misdirection
The Bendigo freeway had thousands of helpful signs, talking about Bendigo, and the airport, and the Hume Highway, and so on. But there still wasn't anything about Ballarat.
I kept driving anyway, really hoping I'd picked the right one.
Anyway, halfway up this freeway, it split in two again.
One half went to the airport, and the other half went to the Hume Highway (neither mentioned Ballarat).
Now, geography isn't one of my best points, but I do know about the Hume Highway.
It goes from Melbourne up to Sydney. Which is north-east, and definitely not in any direction associated with Ballarat.
I stayed on the route to the airport.
By The Way...
There are, of course, other ways to find Ballarat apart from just looking for "Ballarat" on signs. You could also look for the name of the freeway leading to it - in this case the Western Freeway.
I can tell you, quite definitely, that none of the signs mentioned the Western Freeway either.
But moving on...
No Exits
So. Airport.
I didn't want to go to the airport, but I knew that the freeway kept going past it, so I figured I'd stay on it until it told me how to get to Ballarat.
The freeway does indeed go past the airport. For a couple of kilometres.
Then, it goes to Sunbury.
Sunbury is tiny.
Once I realised that I was heading to Sunbury, I knew that I obviously wasn't on the right road. And I started looking for a way to turn around, as fast as possible, so that I wouldn't lose any more time than I had already.
But the road kept going, and going, and didn't have any turn-offs - mainly because the airport was on one side, and the rubbish dump was on the other, so there was absolutely nothing to turn off for.
...and I kept driving towards Sunbury.
Despair
The first possible bit of not-freeway I saw was an emergency exit for part of the airport. It's used only in the case of a plane doing an emergency landing at the edge of the airport while the rest of it is on fire.
This rarely happens, so the exit is pretty much an overgrown bit of field.
And the moment I reached it, I drove in, parked my car, calmly, put the hand-brake on, calmly, and turned off the engine, calmly.
Then I screamed, as loudly as possible, before moving onto some very noisy crying.
I did this for several minutes, alternately between screams and sobbing, while planes zoomed overhead.
Timing
On the positive side, the electronic screen on my first bit of freeway had been absolutely correct: it had taken me an hour-and-a-half to reach my field, and I was still basically in Melbourne, and nowhere near Ballarat.
Instruction Manual
After indulging in some very therapeutic wailing, I pulled out a map.
... in retrospect, I probably should have done this earlier.
Apparently, to get to Ballarat, I needed to:
1) get on the Bendigo-and-airport freeway (like I had done)
2) turn off at the Hume Highway bit (oops)
3) turn off the Hume Highway into the Western Ring Road
4) turn off the Western Ring Road into the Western Highway
5) travel along the Western Highway until it became the Western Freeway
Signs mentioning Ballarat did not appear at all until I reached step 4.
(Weirdly, the only sign I saw mentioning Ballarat before this bit was on my way from Sunbury back towards Melbourne - which is the exact opposite direction to the one I needed to travel in.)
Success!
After my very canny map-using, I managed to find my way to Ballarat without any difficulty at all! (But with lots of yelling at random street signs: "Yeah, you go to Ballarat? You could have told me that EARLIER. Like, BEFORE I was actually three minutes from the edge of the town!")
And I had a wonderful (if late) lunch at the bakery, before tramping around Sovereign Hill looking at all the old stuff.
***
Brief interlude: Sovereign Hill, for those who don't know, is a big outdoor museum, set up as a replica of 1850s Ballarat - back at the height of the Gold Rush.
There are people in costumes, and gold panning, and horses, and old-fashioned houses (fully furnished), and mine tours. It's awesome.
***
There were quite a few school groups there - most of them dressed in period costumes. And I got to see the toffee-making demonstration, and some blacksmithing, but unfortunately missed the gold pouring demo.
...and History Repeats Itself
...because I got lost in Ballarat on my way out of town. I spent fifteen minutes driving around the streets, panicking, because I needed to get to the Glenelg Highway, and all I could find was the university.
(And yes - this time I was using my map. But the uni wasn't on it...)
*sigh*
One day, when I'm insanely rich, I think I'm going to hire a chauffeur. Or maybe just a private jet...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-09-13 12:23 pm (UTC)η
no subject
Date: 2008-09-13 06:36 pm (UTC)So yes, in summary, GPS devices are handy sometimes, but when they fail they leave you up shit creek, because you haven't been taking note of all the turns and roads you took to get to where you are...
no subject
Date: 2008-09-14 02:58 am (UTC)Why haven't you filled me in on this stuff? :-p
That's brilliant!
no subject
Date: 2008-09-14 12:46 pm (UTC)That or my life is actually more interesting than I give it credit for :-p
no subject
Date: 2008-09-13 08:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-14 03:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-13 04:46 pm (UTC)Ballarat always sounds to me as if it is where a Manx immigrant saw a nasty rodent.
Actually there is at least one place in Australia misnamed (by now) after one of our Ballas - Ballajura in WA was Ballajora to start with, and my father in law who lives in WA says that he saw Ballajura described as a native Aboriginal name when he first went there - but its history has now been properly reclaimed.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-13 08:09 pm (UTC)Ballarat (or "Ballaarat") is apparently an Aboriginal word... that is if they've got it correct this time. As a general rule, we sort of start assuming that if a place name sounds Aboriginal, it probably is.
After all, we've got Wagga Wagga, Wollongong, Parramatta, and Koo Wee Rup - Ballajura just sounds like it would fit. I certainly never would have guessed it wasn't if you hadn't told me...
(I am madly in love with your icon, by the way.)
no subject
Date: 2008-09-13 10:02 pm (UTC)Balla is one of the most common prefixes in Manx place names - basically it means 'place of'. And there was quite a lot of Manx emigration to Australia - so maybe more of your Ballas are Manx, too!
no subject
Date: 2008-09-13 06:45 pm (UTC)Of course, you run into even bigger issues when you're trying to drive into a German city with a very incomplete set of maps. The number of times we got into the city only to find ourselves on a set path straight back out of the city over the Rheine...
no subject
Date: 2008-09-13 08:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-14 02:54 am (UTC)I did try to ring you back. You didn't answer or get back to me :-p
no subject
Date: 2008-09-14 02:58 am (UTC)...and I wasn't ringing about that anyway. I was more wanting to rant about this.
Ended up calling my sister instead.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-14 10:51 pm (UTC)I figured it was easy, you just take the left turn at Flemington where it says Ballarat, and that gets you here. Of course, that's after years of going that way to visit parents here, and with me as passenger, not single driver...
no subject
Date: 2008-09-15 06:52 am (UTC)Well worth the effort, though...
no subject
Date: 2008-09-15 11:49 am (UTC)Aw, shucks. Next time we'll be more organised and have a schedule for what to watch when, save on decision-making-time!