Getting a month's disqualification from driving on one's second day of a two week motorcycle tour of Australia, isn't the best of starts, but does help to keep the focus on traffic regulations thereafter.
It's a big country of course but so long as one is heading out of State pronto, the chances of being hunted down and deported for such a misdemeanour, fades rapidly as the State border recedes in the distance. Oh well, the ride to the Phillip Island motorcycle Grand Prix was fun anyway - 10,000 other motorcyclists thought so too.
First impressions of Australia - specifically Victoria and specifically from the saddle of a motorcycle? The infrastructure is impressive and a gauge of the gulf that has opened between that country and New Zealand. Tunnels and flyovers ensure the traffic of Melbourne just glides through rush hour. Then you see why - toll roads abound and more are being erected all the time. The State government has given up trying to meet the burgeoning demand for roading from its own budget and let the private sector come in with its user pays options. Indeed Australia seems to have perfected this private sector formula to such an extent now that its infrastructure experts are busily exporting their project management skills abroad. Fresh from winning Melbourne's Connect East project, Macquarie have just won the contract to construct the Sky bridge in Chicago.
One can't help feeling that New Zealand's obsession with State funding and ownership of these projects is what's holding our own development back. Auckland's transport system for example, is a shadow of Melbourne's.
And the traffic cops? Well in Australia they are masters of disguise. My folly was thinking that a surfies' wagon was occupied by surfies, rather than radar gun-wielding Victorian State police - neither were they very amused when we asked if they got to use their boards at all. But apart from the accuracy of their reading, nothing else about our encounter with them was at all disappointing - from discounting the fine, warning us of the dangers from tourist campervans, which vineyards to visit and giving us some friendly advice re the penalties we could expect from further infringements and in other States, these officers were so friendly they filled out but then omitted to serve me my infringement. I was unsure whether this was a Gomer Pyle blunder or a subtle method of encouraging further motorcyclists from abroad to visit their part of the world. Whatever, I was grateful to be on my way with all my NZ papers handed back and minus the filled out infringement notice. Thank you Victoria, I will return.
South Victoria is dairy country and very reminiscent of Taranaki it is too. Indeed talking to ex-Taranaki dairy farmers in the Warrnambool pub, I quickly appraised why they're farming in Australia and no longer in Taranaki. Put simply, it's economics - the income yield on a farm in Victoria is 15-18%, somewhat higher than its meagre equivalent at home, meaning the ability for young farmers to fund their borrowing and enter the industry is greater in Victoria. Unsurprisingly, the hostility toward corporate farming is even stronger on that side of the ditch - and one can expect it to remain that way so long as individuals are able to afford to set up in that business.
How different the issues facing the more heavily capitalised NZ farms are - where the tolerance for volatility of earnings is crimped by the negative margin between earnings yield and the rate of interest, and where the importance of downstream earnings from processing is critical.
Back to the road. The backroads of Australia are empty - and I mean empty. They make the road south of Hokitika seem like Auckland in rush hour. The problem with that is that it's too easy to settle into a speed-enhanced trance brought on by hours of straight roads and hot sun. The attempts of the authorities to keep you awake with signs promising 'fatigue is fatal', and 'drowsy drivers die' soon wear thin, but more animate disturbances to monotony-enduced euphoria can be scary. In our case it was the intrusion from a frightened emu that decided the noise of a motorcycle was sufficiently seductive to warrant closer inspection. They are big birds - especially enormous when they simply step out from nowhere and are just there - between your bike and your destination.
Maybe bumper to bumper traffic isn't so distasteful after all. While emus don't emit fumes I'm grateful that in NZ at least it's a blessing that we don't still have moas testing the crisis management skills of motorcyclists.
Entering South Australia via Coonawarra one soon sees why Aussie reds are so cheap - the economies of scale make the Blenheim flats look akin to a boutique vineyard. Such scale is a stark reminder that New Zealand must stick to its boutique wines if it is to hold the prices up. Commodity wines are cheap indeed in Australia. Encouragingly it is common for Australian restaraunts to provide a selection of our whites though and they remain sort after. We haven't yet overdone it.
So out of South Australia and on to the dirt tracks of the Outback - the topic for next week.
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