G’day, mate!
Booted from a trip to Australia because I didn’t have a travel visa? Stopped in the Australian outback by an Aussie copper for alleged drunk driving? Out of gas on a desolate South Australian highway? Why can’t my trips go smoothly like everyone else’s?
Carol and I are adventure travelers. By the way, the above photo was taken on a previous trip to Australia. We don’t travel with a tour group. Just give us a rental car and a GPS and off we go. Back in the day it was just a rental car and no GPS. We are trained to expect the unexpected. We go on these trips to find out exactly what the unexpected is going to be. Dealing with uncertainty is my specialty.
With the above in mind let me tell you more about what happened on this CLASS A trip. I am in the midst of a series of CLASS A trips. Just two weeks ago I went trackchasing in Arizona. That was immediately followed by a trackchasing adventure to Argentina. Then last weekend I flew down to Austin to see our granddaughter, Astrid, perform in a play. She was the best. Now Carol and I were starting our adventure to Australia, where we would spend most of our time in the Adelaide area. If that’s not two weeks of CLASS A traveling I don’t know what is. I have no plans to travel to Alabama next weekend!
I guess you could say that Carol and I are frequent visitors to Australia. I’ve been down under a dozen times. Carol has been along for the ride on more than half of those trips. We were returning to Melbourne, Australia to begin this trip. We were last in Melbourne for New Year’s Eve in 2018. Melbourne was one of our most memorable big-city New Year’s Eve celebrations ever.
I plan these trips pretty much on the fly. We might not know if we’re going out of the country until the day before we head to the airport. I guess that truly is being comfortable with uncertainty.
We have had a few missteps with this foreign country planning process but not many. To read about the worst of the worst I would recommend you visit my website, www.randylewis.org, and search out our trip to India. Or…just click this link…India visa problems. That was a classic cluster, to begin with, but at the end of the day the trip was saved and became one of our best.
To get into Australia, all you need is a $20 AUD Electronic Travel Authority (ETA) visa and you’re good to go. To get one of those visas you simply download an app on your phone, make the application and in a matter of minutes you will be approved. Of course, this assumes you are not a convicted felon or have any other minor blemishes on your record.
I had been to Australia for New Year’s 2022, just a couple of months ago. I had my electronic visa from then. These visas are good for a year.
With Carol coming along on this journey it was time to get her electronic visa. However, in the short space of just two months, I had forgotten just how easy I had gotten the ETA visa for myself.
I went online and searched for the method needed to get Carol’s visa. Soon I was ordering Carol a $150 Australian travel visa which is about 100 bucks in U.S. currency. I didn’t need to do that. That was $100 down the drain. After I realized my mistake, which was nonrefundable, I ordered Carol’s $20 electronic Visa and she was good to go. Oh my.
Just after the first of the year, I ordered a new passport as did Carol. Those new passports will be good for our next 10 years of travel. In my line of work/hobby, I can’t be without a passport for more than a couple of days. I never know when an international travel opportunity will pop up. That being the case I elected to drive down to San Diego, which is home to a U.S. passport office, to speed things up. I gave them my old passport and a check and returned the next day to get my new passport. I was using the “expedited” method which requires the normal passport renewal fee of $100 and another $60 to “speed things up” That worked really well for me.
For Carol, we paid the same price for the expedited version but she mailed her passport to a government location in Philadelphia. She received her new passport in about a month. That timing fitted her needs just fine.
When we arrived at LAX for this trip, we were ready to check our bags and board the scheduled 16-hour flight from Los Angeles to Melbourne. We handed over our passports. Then the unexpected happened. We always expect the unexpected. We just don’t know what the unexpected will be but we know it will be. I was informed that my electronic visa was nowhere to be found. What was the problem?
This was the problem. I ordered my electronic visa in late December for my trackchasing visit to Australia over New Year’s. Then I got my new passport in February. When I got that new passport it nullified my existing ETA Australian visa which was linked to my OLD passport. Who could have predicted that? Of course, the unexpected can’t really be known in advance, can it? If it could it wouldn’t be unexpected!
Fortunately, right in front of the airline gate agent, I was able to “reapply” for a second ETA Australian visa. Yes, I would have to pay another $20 Australian visa fee. The agent waited patiently for my visa approval to come through. In less than five minutes I had my visa. Our trip was no longer at risk of being canceled at the very last minute. We were ready to hop on that long flight over to Melbourne.
I must admit I was worried for a moment. I’m a guy who never gets worried. However, when the unexpected is a game-stopper some level of concern is warranted.
When given a choice Carol and I will choose opposite aisles on an airplane. We got those seats today. We fly in coach class on these trips. What’s our strategy on a 16-hour flight? Board the plane, watch movies, and relax until the plane lands. Then we get off the plane. Yes, we try to keep things simple.
Additionally, we had open seats next to us. As a matter of fact, I was sitting on a three-seat side and had three seats to stretch out and sleep just a little bit. You should know that I offered my option to Carol but she liked where she was sitting. I slept in a space that would be adequate for someone who was 4 foot 10 inches in height despite my being 6′ 3” tall.
This was going to be a short trip to Australia. We would be gone for just eight days. Sometimes folks ask me why some of our trips are so short. This visit to Australia was bookended on the front end by last week’s trip to Argentina. Then when we return home we have UCLA NCAA basketball games to attend. I will often tell folks that eight days in Australia is better than no days in Australia! Our travel plan was simple. We would see racing at three different tracks in South Australia. The rest of the time we would do as much touring as the schedule and location would allow.
Rental cars are expensive in Australia. I would end up paying about $100 per day for a Renault Koleos SUV from Avis. Nope. I had never heard of the car either.
Of course, in Australia, they drive on the “opposite” side of the road also known as the left side. Did you know that 42% of the world’s population drives on the left side of the road? I find that an outstanding statistic and worthy of a mention at your very next cocktail party.
I’m going to estimate that I have driven more than 20,000 miles, maybe more on the left side of the road. I’ve made a dozen trips to the UK and a dozen trips to Australia. Often times my driving mileage exceeds 2,000 miles on a single trip. Carol and I have a saying that “lefts are easy and rights are scary” when driving on the left side of the road. I definitely have to pay attention but after a while, it’s not a huge deal. It’s usually a good idea to follow someone else through an intersection just to make sure that I don’t do anything super crazy.
We were only going to spend six overnights in Australia. We would also be on an airplane for the first night and the last night of this journey.
With our destination being Melbourne, the time zone change from Los Angeles was 19 hours. Yes, Melbourne is 19 hours ahead of our Pacific time zone. We would leave on a Monday night and arrive on Wednesday morning in Melbourne. On the return, we would leave Melbourne at 11 a.m. on Tuesday and arrive back in Los Angeles at 7 a.m. on Tuesday. Yes! The very same Tuesday! It’s not often you get to live the same day twice!
The shortest trip I ever took to Australia had me leaving late on Thursday night from Los Angeles and arriving down under on Saturday morning. I quickly picked up a rental car and saw some racing on both Saturday and Sunday. I was back at the airport in Sydney early Monday morning for a flight to Los Angeles that landed early Monday morning as well. That’s a pretty quick weekend trip, isn’t it?
When we go on these trackchasing trips, a little bit of the trip is to see racing at new tracks. As we began this trip, I have seen racing in 86 countries at 2,862 tracks. I know that many of my readers have no interest in auto racing whatsoever. That being the case imagine something that you enjoy and imagine what it would take to experience it nearly 2,900 times at locations all over the world.
The majority of the time on these long adventures is going to be devoted to travel and sightseeing and meeting as many new people as we possibly can. As you will read this trip was very successful in that regard.
If you have ever visited my website at www.randylewis.org you may have noticed a tap titled “Trackchasing Tourist Attractions”. This is a list of places that we have seen and experienced while on these trackchasing trips. The list is not all-inclusive, especially for my foreign trips. But it will give you a pretty good idea of where we’ve been able to take some time to tour.
These are some of the highlights from our past trips to Australia.
Australia Zoo (Owned by Steve Irwin family) – Beerwah, Queensland
City Botanical Gardens – Brisbane, Queensland
Gloucester Park harness racing – Perth, Western Australia
Lyric Theatre (Mary Poppins) – South Brisbane, Queensland
Melbourne city walking tour – Melbourne, Victoria
Melbourne Cricket Ground (seating capacity 100,024!) – Melbourne, Victoria
Melbourne New Year’s Eve celebration (fireworks from 30 commercial building rooftops at once!) – Melbourne, Victoria
Motor Museum of Western Australia – Perth, Western Australia
Platypus Bay cruise – Platypus Bay, Queensland
River Cruise – Brisbane, Queensland
St. Paul’s Cathedral – Melbourne, Victoria
Sydney Opera House (multiple) – Sydney, New South Campbell
Twelve Apostles, Port Campbell National Park – Princetown, Victoria
Yarra River boat cruise – Melbourne, Victoria
When this trip finishes from Melbourne and Adelaide we will have added even more “Trackchasing Tourist Attractions” to the list.
For three of our six nights, we will be staying at Marriott properties. Because I have stayed in Marriott-branded hotels a couple of thousand nights in my lifetime they’re more than willing to give me some pretty nice upgrades. For this trip, they upgraded our room with a beautiful view of downtown Melbourne. They gave us complimentary breakfast, a free bottle of wine, and a box of chocolates among other things. It’s hard not to stay in a Marriott in foreign countries, or in the United States for that matter because of all of the perks they give us.
We would have a couple of days for touring in Melbourne before we had to get on the road. At that point, we would make a seven-hour one-way drive up toward Adelaide and Renmark where the race tracks were located.
Our first touring stop would be to see the Agatha Christie written play, “The Mousetrap”. When we landed in Melbourne we had to wait for nearly two hours to make our rental car pickup time coincide with our drop-off time at the end of the trip. I went to work on my iPhone trying to find some nighttime entertainment for the evening.
Ordering show tickets in a foreign country, even an English-speaking foreign country, is not as intuitive as it might be in the states. Nevertheless, I waded through the process and was rewarded with two tickets to the play being staged at the Comedy Theatre in downtown Melbourne. Just across the street, the production of Mary Poppins was performing. That would have been a good show to see but, alas, I saw Mary Poppins just two months ago in Brisbane, Australia. I know, right?
We dined at an upscale Asian seafood restaurant before the play. At first, the prices looked to be outrageous. Then I was reminded that Americans get a 34% or so discount because of the strong value of the U.S. dollar. At that point prices only seemed slightly higher than what we might expect.
It was surprising to see that the most popular concession item at the theater performance, which was sold out, was a chocolate-covered ice cream cone. Other than that, the theatre experience was identical to seeing something on Broadway in New York or probably in your hometown theatre.
Our second day of touring would be extra special. It’s always best to meet up and spend time with friends who live in the country we are visiting. Most of the time when that happens the people we visit are natives of the country. That would not be the case in Australia!
Hundreds of people subscribe to my financial, travel, and racing newsletters. Frequently people respond with comments detailing their own experiences, sharing their thoughts, and asking questions. I love those types of messages.
One of those folks is a fellow by the name of Don Wilke. For you P&Gers Don retired from P&G a few years ago. Now, he and his wife LaDeana live in Melbourne. They are serving a mission for their church and will live in Australia for two years.
Don and I made arrangements for him and me and our wives to meet up for lunch today at Queen Victoria Market. QVM is one of the top-rated touring spots in Melbourne. Think of the place as a very upscale flea market selling only new items. If you’re looking for an Australian souvenir you can find it easily at Queen Victoria Market.
We selected an Italian restaurant near the market and had a very enjoyable lunch. It was fun to hear about the experiences of an American couple now living in a foreign country. We were able to spend a couple of hours together on a beautiful mid-week afternoon. I think we might have been the first American couple to visit with Don and LaDeana since they arrived in Melbourne a few months ago. It was great meeting these folks for the first time and putting a face to the many messages that Don and I had shared.
The population of Melbourne is somewhere around seven million people. That’s a large city. Although we had a rental car I kept it parked for the first couple of days back at the hotel. Our hotel was just on the other side of the Yarra River from downtown itself. We used Uber to visit the city. We were only paying $10 AUD to park at the hotel but every time we left the parking lot it would cost us another ten bucks. Of course, parking our car in downtown Melbourne would be expensive and a hassle. Uber was the way to go!
When lunch was wrapped up we did some more shopping at Queen Victoria Market. Then we wandered over to Flinders Street Station. This is the main train station in Melbourne. Think Grand Central Station in New York City. Carol and I are always up for a short river cruise. Today we grabbed a boat ride up and down the Yarra River in the shadow of the many Melbourne Skyscrapers.
This brought back some memories. Carol and I spent New Year’s Eve 2018 in downtown Melbourne. They are famous for having all of their tall buildings “synced” to the music and lights of their New Year’s Eve celebration. It’s quite the show and the crowds are humungous!
We had previously ridden the boats up and down the Yarra River. Today the tide was rising. When the tide rises the boats can’t get under some of the low-hanging bridges. We rode under a couple of those bridges where the clearance could not have been any more than a couple of inches. Check out that photo! That’s a tight squeeze.
Later in the day, Carol was in search of some distilled water. Off we went on a treasure hunt for distilled water! This wasn’t easy. We rode Melbourne’s free trams. We took an Uber ride or two. At our third grocery store, Cole’s, we found what we were looking for. This was a wild adventure. We talked to a lot of grocery store employees!
As I am sure you know, Australia measures things using the metric system. On the highway, the most common speed limits are 60 km, 80 km, and 110 km. To get the Boise, Idaho equivalent simply multiply these numbers by .625.
I am here to tell you that I have not always been a model driver on my foreign adventures. Yes, I did get a $175 ticket in Uruguay for driving the wrong way on a one-way residential street. You might enjoy knowing that I realized my error and before I could fix things a federales dressed in civilian clothes, and riding a moped pulled me over. Busted! Before I could return my rental car I had to pay the fine.
I have gotten a few “speed camera” speeding tickets as well. I had one this summer in Belgium. They sent me an email written 100% in the Belgium language telling me of my error. Luckily, I have a good friend who lives in Belgium. He translated things and paid my fine. I reimbursed him via PayPal. I don’t know how I would’ve ever covered that problem without his help.
Yes, even in Australia, I got a speeding camera speeding ticket in the state of Queensland. Those folks kept sending me emails long after I thought I had paid my fine. I like to say in life that if it’s not one thing, it’s another.
Since I seem to be in the mood to admit to my past indiscretions, I will tell you that in my driving life, I have had nine speeding tickets. I will also tell you that I have not had a speeding ticket since 1983 when I got two in the space of one month.
One of those was in southern Illinois after I had just finished attending a religious revival meeting with my grandfather at the state prison in Evansville, Indiana. I was thinking I had done a good deed and thought about reminding the police officer of my actions, but I got a ticket without mentioning it.
I drive my personal car about 12,000 miles a year. In California, nobody ever gets a speeding ticket. Cops don’t want to pull someone over and slow down traffic. I have never seen anybody pulled over in California by the police for speeding.
At the same time, I drive rental cars about 30,000 miles every year in pursuit of my trackchasing hobby. Since I haven’t gotten a speeding ticket since 1983 that means I have driven well over one million miles without getting a ticket, or having an accident, in the United States.
You might know where this is going. I found it a little bit difficult to stay within the speed limit guidelines here in Australia on this trip. Their upper limits seemed to me to be so slow.
It was with this in mind that I entered an 80 km speed zone while crossing a bridge. I flew over that bridge doing 96 km an hour just in time to see a huge white pickup truck with large bold blue letters emblazoned across the door that read “POLICE”. At that point, I knew I was a goner.
As I used to do in my youth, I looked up in the rearview mirror. Here came the cop. I told Carol that we were going to be stopped. I mentioned there was a very good likelihood she could be an accessory to my crime. She was worried.
The cop tailed me for a kilometer or two. Then the lights went on. I pulled over to the left side of the road as I was driving on the left side of the road here in Australia.
Just like in the movies, the cop came up and asked, “Do you know why I pulled you over?” It took all of my self-discipline not to say, “Because I let you?” It also took some common sense not to ask the policeman if I could take his picture for this posting.
I do have a common story ready for situations just like this. My sister was married to a cop. He told me that whenever someone could come up with a story that he had never heard to justify their speeding he let them off the hook. That got me thinking. I needed to come up with a story and have it ready when needed. Today it was needed. What was my story?
I would tell the police officer that my wife had run off with a state patrolman. Today when I saw the officer coming after me with his lights blazing, I feared that this was the same state policeman who was now wanting to return my wife back to me. That caused me to speed. I had no idea if this story would work. What did I really have to lose?
The cop was pretty nice. He asked me if I knew what the speed limit was. I accurately told him the limit was 80 km/h. Then just as if he were reading from the police rookie training manual he asked me if I knew how fast I was going. I told him I thought I was probably traveling about 94 km/h. With some glee in his eyes, he showed me his radar gun. 96 km/h! I was close. I felt I was building some credibility with the police officer.
His next question was “You drinking?” Again, with all of the self-discipline I could muster, I did not say “You buying?” At that point, he pulled out a straw-looking device and asked me to blow into it. Yes, a sobriety test. Luckily, the last alcoholic drink I had was on the airline two days ago, and that was simply a beer. I’m here to report that I passed the sobriety test with flying colors! I hope that the first paragraph about my allegedly being stopped for drunk driving didn’t shake your confidence in me.
Now that the perfunctory questions were out of the way, the policeman told me that he was only going to give me a warning. He said it under normal circumstances with the speed I have been traveling the fine would be $516 Australian. He told me if I had been doing 100 km an hour in the 80-kilometer-an-hour speed zone the fine would have been more than $900 Australian. He was only going to issue me a warning letter. No fine.
He asked me to give him my email address. Again, it took a lot of self-discipline and a little elbowing from Carol for me to actually give him my real email address. He went back to his car for a few minutes. Then he returned with my driver’s license. Later I checked my email and yes, I did have an “Expiation Notice” letter from the Australian police. It pointed out that I was only getting a warning and there were no fees involved. At the same time the police officer told me that if I were to get pulled over at any time on the rest of this trip, there was a very good likelihood the police would see my warning and not be so kind in the future.
I did check to see if the officer was carrying a side arm. He was. For the most part, Australians are not allowed to use or own guns. I think this gave me a sense of safety to see that at least the police had a gun in case it was needed.
Murray Bridge Speedway
To see YouTube racing action from Murray Bridge click HERE.
We came to Australia on this particular weekend because I could schedule three different race track visits on a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. That’s the only reason I chose these dates. Australia was racing on these three particular days because it was a holiday weekend. Normally the best I could do in a mid-season weekend of trackchasing here would be seeing two tracks. Visiting three tracks for the first time would be a definite bonus.
Tonight’s track was the Murray Bridge Speedway in Murray Bridge, South Australia. Murray Bridge was located about eight hours north of where our trip began in Melbourne.
Melbourne is in the Australian state of Victoria. Murray Bridge is in the Australian state of South Australia. Wouldn’t you know it? These two states have different time zones. I know what you’re thinking. Illinois and Indiana are right next to each other and they have a one-hour time zone difference.
That’s not how it works between Victoria and South Australia. Even though these two Australian states border each other their time zone difference is 30 minutes. Who thought that was a good idea? Can you imagine living and working at the border of Victoria and South Australia and having to deal with a 30-minute time zone difference? We gained 30 minutes coming to South Australia and we would lose those 30 minutes when we return at the end of the trip to Melbourne, Victoria.
I was most impressed with the Murray Bridge Speedway. Murray Bridge would be the 51st track that I had seen racing on the continent of Australia. MB was definitely within the top five overall facilities where I’ve trackchased in Australia.
They had just two classes racing tonight. Those were the wingless six-cylinder sprint cars and the super sedans which are a lot like American late-model stock cars.
At each of the tracks that we visited on this trip, we would ask for and get “concession pricing”. Concession pricing, sometimes called pensioner pricing in Australia, is the same thing as a senior discount. At each of the tracks, there was a five-dollar Australian discount with the concession price.
Tonight, we paid an additional $20 Australian so we could park our car high above the quarter-mile dirt oval. From this spot, we watched the proceedings from inside our Avis Renault Koleos Racing Rental Car.
In this part of Australia during this time of year, Australian weather is a lot like California. It’s warm during the day and cools off quite a bit at night. Tonight, being able to watch the racing from inside our own car was a distinct advantage, especially on a windy night.
I took some time to go down and visit the pit area at the Murray Bridge Speedway. I’m glad I did that. I got a chance to see all of the racing machines up close and personal. Don’t miss the photos.
I also spent some time talking to a couple of Aussies. I have to listen pretty closely and make sure I understand exactly what they’re saying. The Australians I meet are always impressed that an American has traveled a very long distance to visit their country, and in this case, to see their auto racing.
I guess there’s only one thing I don’t like about Australian short-track racing. They have way too many heat races. In the United States at a short track, most cars will have one heat race and a feature and that’s it.
In Australia, each class normally has three heat races, and then a feature. I think one of the reasons they do that is because the car counts by class are low. On all three nights of racing that we saw most of the classes brought only eight or nine cars and sometimes fewer.
The Murray Bridge Speedway had a very nice video board that showed instant replays of the racing action and the crashes. Video boards at short tracks are not common. One of the super sedans did a barrel roll. That was a highlight on the video board. The driver escaped unharmed.
The Murray Bridge Speedway was on the way to Adelaide. After the races, Carol and I continued on our drive to Adelaide, South Australia, where we were staying the night. We had a reservation at a place called EOS Sky City. When I travel, if I’m not staying at a Marriott, I’m probably going to use Expedia.com and select the highest-rated hotel that I can afford so Carol lives a life of luxury. She tells me she doesn’t need that, but of course, she deserves it.
We were getting low on fuel. We could do nearly 700 km on a tank of fuel with the Renault Koleos. I never ever consider getting gas until the orange fuel light has been on for a number of miles or in today’s case a number of kilometers.
As we got closer and closer to our hotel, the orange fuel light burned ever brighter. It just seemed like every time we passed a petrol station it was on the wrong side of the road. I figured it would be an easier turn when I found a station on our side. I never did. That was a problem.
Soon we were in the heart of Adelaide. Adelaide is the biggest city in the state of South Australia and the fifth largest city in Australia. Surprisingly to me, English is only spoken in 75% of Adelaide homes. Italian is the second most popular spoken language. Another surprise was that 28% of Adelaide residents say they practice no religious affiliation, the largest “preference” for any form of religion.
Tonight, was Friday night. There was a major festival-type celebration going on at 11 o’clock at night in the city. The place was packed with pedestrians, cars, and people on bikes. I would later come to find out that this was in celebration of the holiday weekend here in Adelaide, where they have the Adelaide Cup a big horse race held on the second Monday of March each year.
My GPS directed us straight into a huge parking garage. We were told this was the EOS Sky City hotel. Before I knew it, we were pulling up to the reception area of a huge brand new high-rise hotel.
It was late. We had been driving for a long time. It didn’t seem like the valet parker and the check-in people were that easy to understand. This was going to be a hotel experience most unlike anything I had ever seen.
I was concerned about one thing. We were using valet parking. Had a valet parker ever run out of gas taking the car from the reception area to wherever the valet parking area was? We were soon going to find out!
You may want to Google “EOS Sky City” in Adelaide and read about this place. Our room keys were two simple balsa wood circular discs just a little bit bigger than a silver dollar. We would use these wooden discs to get us into the elevator and up to our room and past the security doors that blocked off our room and a couple of others. Never before.
At check-in, we were told that our room came with its own iPad. If we needed anything such as room service or any other help, we were to use the iPad. Never before.
The bellman carried our bags up to our room. When we entered our room, it was beautiful. The room had all kinds of amenities, including a top-floor view of Adelaide. The bellman asked if we wanted him to set up Netflix streaming on our TV. Never before.
I looked at the ceiling. I counted more than 20 indentations, which included a sprinkler system, a smoke detector, and all kinds of lights highlighting the paintings in our room. This place was something. The shower was the size of many people’s living rooms. Never before.
The next morning, we would come to discover that the EOS Sky City hotel complex was a major casino in Adelaide. When I made the reservation, I didn’t know that! This was a huge casino on par with places that you might see in Las Vegas.
I used to be our company’s salesperson in Las Vegas. I would travel there once a month and arrive on Sunday night and stay until Thursday or Friday. Every night from about 6 p.m. until about 2 a.m., my good college buddy, Jim Hammer (who still lives in Las Vegas) and I would go gambling. Blackjack was the game.
Jim and I each had our specialties. I had read the book titled “Beat the Dealer” by Edward O. Thorpe a University of California math professor. Professor Thorpe ran simulations on every card combination you will see in blackjack and what the probabilities were for success. I was a card counter. Jim and I pooled our money. While I counted cars, he chatted up the waitresses. I was a really good card counter. Jim was a very good waitress persuader if you know what I mean (wink!). Have I digressed? Please forgive me but these memories bring a huge smile to my face.
I don’t spend a lot of time gambling now. It’s nearly impossible to count cards because the casinos use multiple decks at virtually every blackjack table in the world. With multiple decks, the effectiveness of card counting is diminished. If you can’t count cards the best you can expect to do playing blackjack properly is break even. I don’t gamble to break even.
On this Saturday morning, we passed by a blackjack table. The casino was pretty quiet. It was still early. Carol gave me a $20 Australian bill. We agreed that I would play one hand.
My two cards turned out to total seven. The dealer had a four showing. I drew to my hand and got a face card for 17. I stayed with that. The dealer busted and now I had a $20 profit. I immediately went to the cashier with my four $10 chips. I kept one as a souvenir and spent the rest!
The beautiful Adelaide railway station was right next to our hotel. We toured that as well as the Samstag Museum of Art. Then we walked around the River Torrens, which runs right in front of the brand-new Adelaide Convention Center. We didn’t have much time for Adelaide. Today was an absolutely gorgeous weather day. Adelaide was as clean of a city as any I have ever seen. I wish we had more time for Adelaide.
Next up was going to be nearly a three-hour ride up toward Renmark, South Australia. We needed to get some gas/petrol. At Australian gas stations, you simply pull up to the pump and start filling the tank. You don’t pay at that point, just grab the nozzle and fill ‘er up. When you are finished you walk into the convenience store and settle up.
Aussie petrol stations sell fuel by the liter. The prices are in Australian dollars, obviously! We found prices to be in the $1.85-$2.00/liter range. Gas priced at $2.00/liter is about $5.00 U.S. per gallon at the current exchange rates. The current price of gas in the U.S. is about $3.50/gallon.
Most Americans that I meet think that gasoline is high-priced in the U.S. In point of fact, I can’t think of a single country that I have visited in the past several years where U.S. gas prices were higher than these countries. If you go to Canada or Australia or Europe or the U.K. or Japan you are going to see that U.S. gasoline prices are lower than in each of these locales. I just don’t understand why Americans think our gas prices are high. Of course, everyone wants prices for everything they buy to be lower but is it realistic to think U.S. gas prices should be even lower given the price of world oil?
Our next two tracks were going to be “country” tracks. Country tracks are just a little bit more laid-back than a very professional racing facility like Murray Bridge. At the country tracks, most fans will bring their own lawn chairs to use. Car counts are likely to be smaller and the rest of the operation will be simply what I call “country”.
Riverland Speedway
To see YouTube racing action from Riverland click HERE.
Tonight, we were seeing racing at the Riverland Speedway in Renmark, Australia. These country tracks start racing at 5 o’clock in the afternoon. The sun doesn’t set until nearly 8 p.m. Dirt track racing doesn’t do all that well during the daytime, especially on hot, sunny, and windy days. The dirt dries out and makes the track slick. The dirt dries out and creates a very dusty viewing situation for the fans.
The Riverland Speedway was running six-cylinder winged sprint cars, street stocks, junior sedans, and mod lites. Again, each class ran three heats and their feature event. That’s way too many heat races in my judgment. But with small car counts putting the cars on the track multiple times keeps the show moving and hopefully entertains the fans.
By the way, did you know that I raced a mod lite at the Millard County Speedway in Millard, Utah? Yep. This was a special media member race and I ended up winning the feature event. And yes, that race is recorded on YouTube. Check it out HERE.
The concessions were good at Riverland Speedway. What we might call a “concession stand” is called a canteen or a kiosk in Australia. There was also a guy selling everything strawberry out of a food trailer. I ordered a strawberry “thick” shake. It was delicious. If you only order a milkshake and not a thick shake you are likely to get flavored milk. If you like a good milkshake, make sure it’s a thick shake in Australia. It is only when I review photos like this do I understand why I always gain weight on these trips.
We also had dinner at the track. At the canteen, we ordered the “hamburger and the lot”. This simply means you’re getting a hamburger with everything including lettuce, tomato, onions, cheese, and sauce. All of the food was good.
The racing at a track like this might start at 5 pm. and run until 10 p.m. or even later. A college basketball game will go on for two hours. A football game might be closer to 3 1/2 hours. Five hours of auto racing on a short track in most circumstances is too long for my taste and certainly too long for Carol’s taste. When we go to a track like this, we show up, we check out the ambiance, we eat the food and we watch all of the racing until it no longer becomes entertaining. At that point, we leave. It’s a very simple formula. I come to the races to be entertained.
For the next two nights, we were staying at a place called the Big River Golf & Country Club in Berri, South Australia. This place was expensive. I will also tell you it was overpriced. It looked and sounded a lot better on Expedia than it did upon entering the door of room number 201.
Whenever we go on a trip Carol is always on the lookout for postcards. She has a list of younger people in our family who will get one of those postcards. This is a three-pronged adventure. First, we have to find postcards. In the electronic age, postcards are not as available as in the past. Then we have to take out a second mortgage on our house to buy international stamps. Finally, we will be looking for a post office to mail the cards. I’ve gone to asking Siri to direct us to a post office for this purpose. Carol loves sending those postcards!
When we woke up in the morning, I checked TripAdvisor to see what the most popular things to do were in Renmark, South Australia, the biggest “city” in the area. I use TripAdvisor and other similar sources to give me a heads-up on the most popular local sites for us to visit and experience.
The #1 rated tourist attraction in all of Renmark, South Australia was Heading’s Cliff. Of course, we had never heard of this place. No harm no foul there. Isn’t it always fun to go on vacation and see things you never expected to see? I plugged the Heading’s Cliff location into the GPS and off Carol and I went. We soon found ourselves scaling, a three-story viewing tower to get the best view of the place.
I was a little surprised that we were the only people on this Sunday morning touring the #1 attraction in all of Renmark. It was what it was. We enjoyed the solidarity and the raw beauty of the place.
It looked as if houseboat rentals were a big item in this area. As we looked down from our perch we saw a couple of those that appeared to have been rented by partygoers who were enjoying the day. This was a good touring start for us.
It was easy to see even more Trip Advisor-recommended highlights in Renmark. The area was so condensed. We checked out these ranked attractions. #2 – Twenty Third Street Distillery, #6 – Bert Dix Memorial Park, #7 – Paringa Bridge, #9 – Lock Five, and #21 Renmark Club (lunch). In one short morning, we knocked out half of the top 10 attractions from Renmark, South Australia!
Sunline Speedway.
To see YouTube racing action from Sunline click HERE.
Our third and final track visit on this Sunday night was going to be at the Sunline Speedway in Waikerie, South Australia. This visit would be marked by several “people encounters”. These folks were friendly and glad to have us at their track.
I had messaged all three of the tracks that we were visiting in advance of our coming to Australia. The Sunline Speedway stood head and shoulders above the other two tracks with their welcoming attitude toward Carol and me.
Sunline’s announcer, Trevor Scott, had gotten in touch before we even left for Australia. He and I actually did an interview using Facebook messenger on his radio program. Where were we when we did the interview? We were driving out in the middle of nowhere, somewhere in South Australia! That was pretty cool.
Tonight, I met Trevor for the first time personally. We did another nice interview during one of the breaks in the racing action at Sunline. Wanna hear what we talked about. Click this link to hear the entire interview.
Then the track promoter came to the announcing tower to say hello. He told me his nickname was “Wakka”. Wakka was happy to have me and gave me one of the track’s souvenir coffee cups with the track logo emblazoned on it. What a nice guy.
While I was doing my interview with Trevor Scott, Carol was sitting next to a couple watching the races. When I got back, she had made fast friends with two Australians, Mark and Maria.
Mark and Maria were on holiday from their home in Adelaide. They were camping in a local caravan park for the three-day holiday weekend. They were a friendly and enthusiastic couple.
Mark and Maria are planning a one-and-a-half-year visit to the United States very soon. They have all kinds of plans. I hope that everything turns out really well for them including a trip where they expect to race their car at the Pikes Peak Hillclimb in Colorado.
Mark and Maria are road racing fans. Road racing is a totally different experience than short-track dirt racing. Think polo and bowling. Mark told us he has been a championship driver in the Australian V8 supercar series in the past.
We had already met so many people at the track. It was hard to believe that two ladies by the name of Sandra and Jen were going to be in our near-term future at the Sunline Speedway as well. Just as we were getting up to go, we ran into Sandra. She had heard my interview and actually served me dinner tonight from the canteen.
Sandra was a nurse. We peppered her with questions about Covid and the Australian response. Australia had a much stricter lockdown for Covid than most other places around the world. When they had lockdowns, no one could travel from one state to another. No one from outside of Australia was permitted to enter the country.
Then Sandra introduced us to Jen who was Wanker’s partner. Jen was very friendly and gave us a free racing program. Then she made me take my souvenir coffee mug out of the box to confirm it was the right mug.
I don’t know how many people I have met at racetracks in my time. The number has to be in the thousands. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that hundreds of thousands of people have heard my interviews at the track or on local radio and TV stations. In Malta (above), I once did a one-hour ESPN “Sports Center” type show with trackchasing as the main theme.
Somehow people seem to think that if a person travels a long distance to visit their little part of the world that they are special. I don’t know if special is the right word but unusual might cover it. I will tell you this. When Carol and I go on trips we meet more locals than most tourists.
I was just asking Carol on this trip that if every highway in the United States and all over the world that I have driven on was closed for an hour, would it be noticeable in this big world of ours? She thought that it would be.
When the racing was finished all we had to do on Monday was drive eight hours, on a public holiday from the Renmark, South Australia area down to Melbourne, Victoria. We had all day to do it. We were warned that traffic would be heavy.
I looked at my GPS to confirm the route. It told me that the no-toll road option would take us 10 minutes longer to drive but save us about nine dollars in Australian tolls. I figured that 10 minutes of my time was worth nine dollars.
Off we went. How was the traffic on a public holiday? Nonexistent. We drove miles and miles before we would see a single car. Even when we got close to Melbourne city there wasn’t much traffic.
This isolation was a little worrying when we were again out of the middle of nowhere, which was where we were most of the time. Sometimes the road was only one lane wide. We were in the boonies. Some of my Aussie friends were messaging me that we might be lost. Then that doggoned orange low fuel light came on. I think that makes Carol a bit jittery.
I tried to check Siri to see where the nearest petrol station might be. However, we were so far off the grid Siri pretty much just told me, “Good luck!”. Often we didn’t have any phone reception at all. By the way, I use my California AT&T phone service to power my GPS all over the world.
After we had driven about 40 kilometers with the low fuel light ablaze it seemed prudent to turn off the air conditioning and slow down just a little bit. I was seeing signs that told me not to speed and while trying to save fuel I would not be speeding.
I looked over at Carol. She seemed worried. Why would she seem worried? I don’t believe in her entire life she has ever run out of gas with me, but she has worried about that eventuality thousands of times.
I will tell you that I did run out of gas on a toll road in Chile (above). I wasn’t close to anything at that point. I remember Siri directing me to a gas station there when I really needed the fuel. When I arrived, it looked as if the station had burned to the ground ten years ago. That little “issue” in Chile delayed my trip by about three hours. It also reminded me that nobody in Chile speaks English or understands how a fellow might get some gasoline if he ran out of petrol on a Chilean tollway. No problem. I am comfortable with uncertainty.
Ultimately, we did come across a petrol station. I’m sure I put more gas in the tank than the car’s owner’s manual says it officially holds. The convenience stores in Australia are as modern as anything that you will likely see in the states. Unlike in Europe, there is no charge for using the bathrooms, which are called toilets outside of the U.S. in most places. The word “toilet” just doesn’t resonate with me. I’m always embarrassed to ask a stranger where the toilet is!
We saw quite a few kangaroo warning signs and a few signs warning of bears. We did see several kangaroos. They were all asleep alongside the road just like deer would be if you were traveling in Pennsylvania.
Making an eight-hour drive on primarily two-lane roads and driving a right-side steered car can be tiring. We didn’t find the Australian roads to be in great shape. The surface offered up lots of dips and bumps. I’m suspecting big heavy trucks have hurt their roads.
We did make it back to the AC Hotel by Marriott in Melbourne before the sun went down. Our original plan to run into downtown Melbourne for one last dinner was replaced by ordering room service.
To begin our trip, we left California on a Monday night and arrived in Melbourne on Wednesday morning. Now, on Tuesday morning we would grab a non-stop 15-hour flight back to Los Angles. We were scheduled to land on Tuesday morning at 7 a.m. four hours before we LEFT Melbourne on Tuesday morning their time.
What were the trip highlights? There were many. Meeting new people topped the list. Having lunch with Don Wilke and his wife LaDeana was perfect. Meeting all the nice folks at the Sunline Speedway was top-notch.
Touring Melbourne and seeing a theatrical production amongst the locals was one of the best things we did. Cruising up and down the Yarra River and eating at specialty restaurants in Melbourne topped the list. Seeing the countryside in 1,999.1 kilometers of driving can’t be forgotten.
Oh yes! What brought us to Australia in the first place? Racing. We added three new tracks to our lifetime lists. Carol has now seen racing at 683 tracks in 52 countries. My totals stand at 2,865 tracks seen in 86 countries. It is always the racing that takes us around the world. It is nearly always the people and places that we will remember the longest. For us, that’s a good formula.
One of the last messages I read before we jumped on the plane back home was from a guy who lives in Australia’s Northern Territory (NT). He was telling me about three tracks I’ve never been to that will be racing on three consecutive nights in a couple of months. Then track announcer Trevor Scott mentioned there were some really good tracks I needed to check out in the Northern Territory itself. Will I make any of these trips? I have learned never to say never.
Hope you enjoyed our Australian travel log. If you’ve been down under you can compare our experience with your own. If you have never been maybe something I mentioned will be the spark to begin your own adventure. I sure hope so.
My next posting is going to be more financially oriented. I’ll tell you how I managed our expenses and income to retire at the age of 52. Many people ask me how I can pay for all of this and the people who don’t ask…want to. Stay tuned.
Good day, mate!
Randy and his Sheila (Australian term!), Carol