Ever since I first started visiting Australia 11 years ago with Chris, I’d always hear comments from his parents and pretty much all his relatives about how bad the traffic can get to drive relatively short distances. They would make comments not only about the road rage, but also how ridiculous it was that it could take so much time to drive so little, and yet you’d still encounter endless cars. So that would be a (lazy) excuse to not socialize with friends/family who didn’t live on your side of town as often.
Although we’ve certainly sat in traffic at peak hours while down in Melbourne, I never really thought much about it until we were going through intense traffic this late afternoon to get to Rosanna to visit some friends and their two young kids, a suburb of Melbourne, from Highett, which is where Chris’s brother lives now. The distance is only about 26 km, or 16 miles, yet according to the Google Maps estimate, it would take 1 hour and 10 minutes to get there. We were supposed to meet at a playground at 5pm, and we left just past 4. And based on this, we’d be late.
Chris drove us over, and the entire time, I kept thinking… why is this taking so long? We’re all technically in the same city, so why does it feel like we’re driving an endless distance to get to ANOTHER city? Well, I guess they made the drive down to Brighton last year for Pookster’s birthday, so this drive is sort of like a “it goes both ways” thing, right? How could people do a drive like this regularly? How? At times, it almost felt like we were driving through LA traffic!
Well, we eventually got there… to find out our friends, who live just minutes away from the playground, were running late themselves. But we made it. It was fun. Kaia got to have her first experience with a cubby house in a backyard like a true Aussie kid (and threw a fit when I took her away from the play kitchen inside because it was dinner time). They had some kids time. It was worth it in the end. I may just never want to go back there again knowing how far it is, though…