Usually on Wednesdays I leave work and head back to Mount Helen. This week, however, I was going to Mount Martha instead. So I left work and asked my trusty Sat Nav to take me to Stella and Tony's place.
Off we set. We trundled along Plenty Road. We turned along to La Trobe University. I was confidently expecting it to take me along Waterdale Road. But no! Go straight on, it said. So I did. We turned onto Waiora Road and later on to Lower Plenty Road. I wonder where we are going, pondered I.
Then it said to turn right, just too late for me to realise that it meant rightnowthisveryminute. I couldn't just abruptly turn right. There was traffic behind me. So I kept going.
Cross the railway line, it said, then turn right into Turnham Avenue. Turnham Avenue?????? I looked around and realised that we were trundling through Rosanna and that we were about to turn into THE Turnham Avenue. The road we first lived on when we moved to Australia in the mid 1960s. We had lived in a rental property up Lower Plenty Road for a short time but Turnham Avenue was the first road we had lived on long term. Cool! Haven't been there for such a very long time.
Naturally I went to look at the house we had lived in. Turnham Avenue is blocked off after our house and there is what I think is a disabilities support centre next to it before you get to the path that leads to the park where there certainly was (I don't know if there still is) a scout hut where I went to Brownies and Guides. The railway is being put up on stilts so there is LOTS of scaffolding and building works going on. The house we used to live in is now two units and looking very much tattier than it did when my parents owned it! The house next door (on the other side, not the disabilities centre) is not looking tatty, and never did. I should have got out of the car and had a wander round but I was supposed to be heading to Mount Martha so I didn't. Next time.
The sat nav took me up to Rosanna Road and then along to Heidelberg where I would have ended up had I gone along the usual route. Assuming that the sat nav hadn't decided it was time for me to revisit my childhood haunts, I guess it was avoiding traffic delays somewhere along the way.
No further excitements and I got to Mount Martha in good time for salmon and chips for dinner.
On Thursday we all went to Heidelberg so Tony could see his oncologist. No excitements getting there or back, except that we stopped at an Oliver's for afternoon tea. I've not eaten in an Oliver's before. I have bought coffee but that's about it. I was quite impressed. I had rosemary seasoned baby baked potatoes and they were delicious. Stella and Tony seemed to enjoy their orange and poppy seed muffins. I think we will go again next time we are coming back from the oncologist. We miss lunch when we go to see him because we always have the first or second afternoon appointment and it's too early for lunch when we leave Mount Martha and a touch too late when we leave the oncologist as the local pubs stop serving food at 2 and there isn't really anything else. So somewhere which has nice coffee and decent cake about half way back is ideal.
Friday morning I headed back to work. Had a good run along, no traffic hold ups, nothing exciting happening. Until I got to the Bulleen Road exit where I expected to be told to turn right. Instead it said to turn left. Left? Yes, left. So I did.
Then, of course, the sat nav wanted me to turn right onto all sorts of local roads, where you aren't allowed to turn right at that time of day. Eventually I ended up in North Balwyn turning onto Burke Road. Oh look. If I turn left here I would end at Robert and Susan's place. I used to have a friend who lived in that direction. Moving right along we end up in East Ivanhoe and I used to have tennis lessons there and in my teenage years I had a long lasting boyfriend who lived over there and I used to go and ....... Another drive along memory lane. I don't know what we were avoiding but it was a beautiful drive on a sunny autumn morning through leafy suburbs with trees in autumn colours.
I think my sat nav loves me :-D
Yesterday evening I was coming back to Mount Helen from work. And the sat nav led me a merry dance. It didn't really do anything it hasn't done before at that time on a Friday, except that it combined a whole load of diversions, which it hasn't done before. Again, I don't know what it was avoiding, but other drivers' sat navs were obviously avoiding it too. Eventually I ended up on roads that I didn't know in places that I didn't know, before ending up back on the Melton Highway and in familiar territory again. So not a trip down memory lane but an interesting drive all the same.
And all this was made all the better because I still had Lindsey's car which pretty much drives itself. All I have to do is steer and watch the road a bit and listen to the sat nav.
She's taken it back now ;-(
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