When we opened the curtains at the front of our cabin this morning, we looked out to see a kangaroo eating the grass; a nice sendoff for us!
We hit the road a little before nine, taking advantage of a short-cut our hotel owner David had given us. It saved us from having to drive up and over the mountain to get to the highway that would take us to Adelaide.
We had been on the highway about 15 minutes when we saw flashing lights coming up right behind us. I was being pulled over by the cops. We were in the middle of nowhere. I hadn’t been speeding. What could it be?
“Good morning, officer!” I said in my cheeriest voice and with a big smile on my face.
“Good morning,” Senior Constable Mick Ryan replied, as his partner came around the passenger side of the car, scaring the daylights out of Roslyn. Constable Ryan was also smiling. “How ya’ going? Where are you from?”
“Atlanta, Georgia.”
“Atlanta? You should be there today,” he said, referring to the Super Bowl.
“Oh no, I’d much rather be here in Australia today,” I told him.
“May I see a driver’s license,” he asked.
“Certainly,” I said, fishing it out and handing it over.
“Have you had anything alcoholic to drink today?”
“No,” I scoffed in my best “as if” tone.
“Good! Have you ever used one of these,” he asked, producing a breathalyzer.
“No, sir!”
“Well, you just blow into the tube like you were blowing up a balloon, until I tell you to stop.”
I did and he did.
“Very good. Now I’ll just enter this into the computer so I can show I talked with you.” With that, he walked back to his car. Roslyn’s blood pressure was quickly falling back into the normal range.
He came back and handed back my license.
“Was this just a random stop?” I asked.
“Well, we saw your car had rental car plates. Drug smugglers often use rental cars between Melbourne and Adelaide ‘cause they think they’re less conspicuous.”
“And are there really people who’ve been drinking at 9:45 in the morning?” Roslyn wanted to know.
“Usually it’s when they’ve had a big night,” he answered, implying some drivers who’d been out late drinking might still be over the legal limit at 9:45 a.m. Constable Ryan wished us well and we were on our way.
David, who had given us the shortcut to the main highway, had also warned us the drive to Adelaide was one of the most boring he had ever driven. He wasn’t exaggerating. Miles of nothing but flat beige fields and the occasional tree, reminiscent of the oppressive monotony drivers must endure on I-70 from central Missouri to western Kansas, I-16 from Macon to Savannah, or anywhere on road in Indiana.
About three hours into our drive, we crossed the state line between Victoria and South Australia. Our time changed, moving not a full hour, but just a half-hour earlier. Why a half-hour? When Australia originally adopted time zones, South Australia, in the Central Time zone, was an hour behind the east. But in 1899, Central Time was moved to only half-hour behind the East, after lobbying by businesses who wanted to be closer to Melbourne time and cricketers and footballers who wanted more daylight to practice in the evenings. The common international practice of setting one-hour intervals between adjacent time zones.? Fuggettaboutit. Attempts to correct these oddities in 1986 and 1994 were rejected.
We made it to our hotel in Adelaide without further incident. We walked around to stretch and enjoy the nice weather, had a very nice meal at a nearby Italian restaurant, and repaired to our hotel for the evening.
We did see on a local newscast a report on the Super Bowl, which had begun from 7:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m., depending on where in Australia you are. . As Senior Constable Ryan indicated, at least some Australians have at least a passing interest in the game. Which is just a little more than Roslyn and I had in the game.