For the *love* of Glod

[highlyeccentric]

May I never complain about traffic in Nelson Bay again.

For some explanation: I live in a very small town. Small small small town. We pick up a bit during the tourist season (ie, now), but still. The kind of town which has one caravan park and one dodgy motel, and a few B&Bs.

I work in a much bigger tourist town. Nelson Bay is about forty minutes east of the Pacific Highway's Heatherbrae junction, and abour an hour north-and-east of the end of the F3 Freeway. The main road between Newcastle and the Bay, creatively named Nelson Bay Road, is the one I have to take to get to work (or, in the other direction, to get to the airport, to Newcastle, or to pretty much anything else in the known universe). Traffic on Nelson Bay Road at the moment is pesky- yesterday and today we crawled at 15ks an hour when the dual carriageway ended. Traffic IN the Bay is a slow-moving, pedestrian-infested tourist hellhole. I've been bitching and moaning about this all week.

Today, I dropped Joel off in the bay for work, and took it into my mad little head to go into Westfield Kotara - the biggest shopping centre for hours in any direction. WHY, oh ye gods and little fishes, WHY? This shopping centre is located on the intersection from hell. To the south, Nortcott Drive joins the Pacific Highway southbound (which isn't used by tourists thanks to the freeway, but is still a major thoroughfare for locals); to the north, there's three blocks of Homemaker's Centre, also having Boxing Day sales, and you have to avoid getting funnelled into the left-turn lane too early and ending up surrounded by bedding and furniture shops. And running east-west is another major connecting road going from Adamstown through to New Lambton. Somehow, I got stuck in the middle of this intersection while all the lights changed around me. That was fun. So was fighting my way through the David Jones' sales only to find that no quality shoe companies are making low, wide court shoes. So I gave up and went to cheapie shoe stores and Target, and am now armed with two pairs of shoes, two new bras and a pair of underpants which proclaim that my attention span would be longer if it weren't for all the shiny things.

And then I got lost coming home, and once I got on Nelson Bay Road again got buffeted around in all the northbound traffic. Most unpleasant.

~

An explanation for those with the good fortune not to live in the Australian tourist belt: you know how you hear all the horror stories about Heathrow airport on Christmas Eve? Well, some people in Australia do start moving about in the days before Christmas, and Christmas Day itself usually sees a fair bit of short-distance travel (the three-to-four hour journeys). But because Christmas is also the beginning of the summer holiday season, the Wall of People starts on Boxing Day, and the hellhole is the Pacific Highway between Hexham (where the F3 Freeway from Sydney ends) and Taree (the next bigish town, a few hours north of here), with all the arterial roads running off it copping their fair share. The radio tells me that there's been 20km traffic jams around Bullahdelah (about an hour and a half north of here), and the Karuhah Bypass (which was supposed to speed up the highway traffic) has ground to an absolute halt several times today. The police are swarming everywhere and deducting double demerit points for all kinds of things (ahaha and guess who forgot to take her license to work with her yesterday?), and for the next two weeks the local TV stations will keep up Holidy Road Toll stats with morbid glee.

I don't think any of you aussie people are stupid enough to go travelling at this time of year, but if you do: for the love of glod stick to the mountains wherever you can. And now, I'm off to get dressed and get back into the car and head for work...

Comments

[strippedbare.livejournal.com]

Yeeaaaaaaaah driving from Adelaide to Melbourne over the next two days.

But we're mixing it up and as stated, dividing it over two days - taking the slow and scenic rather than the direct route. We're hitting the Grampians and staying there tomorrow night, and the next morning veering down to Great Ocean Road and going to Melbourne that way. Probably plenty of tourists, but less of that "we are driving home RAAAAR" aggro that we'd otherwise get.

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

erk, good luck!

[kishnevi.livejournal.com]

Adelaide to Scotland by car? And one day each way?
Now that's a vacation!

(I know, I know; but that's what you get for living in a country that borrows its geographical names from the mother country. At least we 'Mericuns put a "New" before our borrowings.)

[kayloulee.livejournal.com]

I guess now's not the time to mention that even though Byron Bay is a major tourist destination as well, there was next-to-no traffic when my family went down there on the 23rd? Which is weird, because the Bay only has one major entry point, which takes the northbound and southbound traffic, so usually you get a couple of kms, if not more, of cars backed up.

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

There was no traffic to speak of here until the 26th, either. Some holidaymakers hit us on monday, but not enough to create Traffic.

[tarimanveri.livejournal.com]

Wow, I'm sorry about the crazy traffic and the having your town taken over by tourists, but I have to say I found it strangely fascinating to read about someone else's small town's summer tourist problems. The tourists in my smallish hometown (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernon,_British_Columbia) don't make life as awful as it sounds like yours do, but all the people who have moved here to retire in the last ten years or so have made it kind of large-ish and soulless.

I also apologize for the doubtless hordes of my fellow Canadians who are contributing to the influx of tourist hordes!

But on the other hand, I'm pretty sure our local ski mountain is full of Australians right now...

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

I must say, I don't think I've had any Canadians in the shop yet this year. If they're lurking about, they're obviously not buying expensive seafood. Also, they're unlikely to be DRIVING anywhere, unless they hired a car or some such. Trafficwise, foreigners have much in their favour. They don't decide to do weird shit like driving from Sydney to Brisbane in one day, for example.

[niamh-sage.livejournal.com]

Just for interest, the record for the longest traffic jam ever was Lyon to Paris in February 1980, at 176km long 0_0 Due to lots of traffic and bad weather, apparently.

The summer holidays in France bring horrible jams in general - I'm sure I've heard somewhere that there were 500km worth of traffic jams in France on the first day of the French summer holidays. This is probably why Arni's family chooses to go to south of France at least a month before the beginning of summer...

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

Heh, smart family. My parents used to do all their travelling in February, after everyone else had given up and gone home... Which is why I'm sure that I was conceived in a tent :P

[sjazzmreow.livejournal.com]

So... driving through Sydney on New Years Day not advised, then?

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

*tilts head* Dunno what Sydney traffic's like on New Years, really. Probably not too bad- the holiday mob will still be up our way until the Sunday, I predict.

The real question is where are you going TO once you've gone through Sydney?

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

Oh, wait. Sydney will be stuffed full of people for New Years Eve, all trying to leave on New Years Day. GOOD LUCK TO YOU.

If you can, go round - get on those M-something or other roads and don't get off until you're south / east / west of the city at whatever end you're supposed to be on.

[sjazzmreow.livejournal.com]

TA.

We're only driving as far in as Penrith on NYD, actually. The next day we'll be taxi or training into the airport to go to New Caledonia (WHOOOP). A coastal holiday without the traffic.

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

Oh, you'd be fine coming in from the west to Penrith on NYD, I assume- the traffic will all be going the other way. And besides, it's Penrith, it doesn't even count.

[quisba.livejournal.com]

Ahem:

I've done a fairly extensive amount of travel between Newcastle and the Southern Tablelands / South Coast / Central West in the last nine months, and here is my few cents.

I was on the M7 (westbound) on october long weekend - the saturday, not the big travel day. And it was late. The traffic was so bad it took me roughly 36 minutes to get through the first e-toll at the end of the M2 / start of M7 - A grand movement of no more than 250m from the traffic lights.

All in all, what would normally be a 215 minute trip from Newcastle to Goulburn with no stop, turned into a six hour nightmare with more stops than most telegrams.

---

Pros: New years day - If you leave early enough you will avoid most traffic so as such it will be more like driving at midnight on sunday, as from experience everyone will be still far too drunk or hungover to be driving.

Leave it too late in the day though and you risk, well, everything.

I'll be doing the trip on the 2nd, and I suspect it will be far worse than NYD. Then the following day over to Nowra, via Wollongong - through Moss Vale with it's horrible stretch of road and past Robertson with the "Big Potato"

[kishnevi.livejournal.com]

"you have to avoid getting funnelled into the left-turn lane too early and ending up surrounded by bedding and furniture shops."

That has a distinct horror movie flavor about it.

I live in a resort destination, but we don't have traffic jams like that. Or more accurately, we do, but that's simply normal rush hour on the Palmetto and Dolphin expressways (that's the major arteries in Miami). One way you are fortunate is that all these people are by and large Aussies. Here in Florida we get tourists from all over. In fact, given the demographics, we get residents from all over. The confluence of drivers who learned to drive in say, Germany, Venezuela, Quebec, New York City, Jamaica and Pakistan, is very interesting, in the Chinese sense of the word. Plus an added soupcon of retirees who come down for the winter....
We have essentially two seasons here--hurricane season, and tourist season. And many's the time when I've felt tourist season is by far the worst of the two.

[(Anonymous)]

Tahryeeeeh? Oy godda seester in taaahrreee. Say that in your broadest aussie accent. Now let me laugh a bit. My village is about an hour from Taree. We've all seen that bit in the chant of Jimmy Blacksmith, since said bushranger was shot around there.
To me, it epitomises Taree. Don't go there. But if you are heading in that direction, DO NOT go through Buladelah if it's a peakish time. There is a ginormous bottleneck a lot of the time, since the town infrastructure can't cope with having a major road through it. Turn off earlier and go the Buckett's Way. It'll add 20 minutes to Taree, and it's not a freeway by any stretch of the imagination. But it's sealed, and effectively traffic-free. It took one person I was talking to 15 hours to get from Marrickville to Taree on the 27th of Dec. That's usually about a 4-5 hour trip, depending on stops. Also, say Buladelah bu-LA-deh-la (as in la-dee-da, with the the emphasis on LA). Not because it's right. It's not. Funny, though. If