Friday, November 13

Well hurray! our ship has come in and our stuff is now going through customs. I expect we will have to pay some fines, as we've been told they are extremely picky and the only thing we'd been told in advance was not to pack any seeds. We were talking with another ex-pat recently who said customs fined him $150 for having packed a box of popcorn, and another $100 for dirt on the bottom of his son's shoes. I'm sure they'll find dirt on some of our outdoor things, can't imagine how they wouldn't, especially with garden stuff.

At dinner with friends, one lady talked about her experience on the Aussie train that basically runs from the east coast to Perth, and she said the route is completely straight for many, many miles. Apparently it wasn't until several hours had passed that the train came to a curve, and the conductor was able to see the end of the train. He saw that a car, which was being transported by one of the passengers, had slipped off the back of the end of the train and was being dragged along the track, and had been dragged for miles. Needless to say the car was in pretty bad shape, and since many of the passengers had been drinking for hours, they all volunteered to lift the car off the tracks and back onto the train. However, the conductor thought this was not a good idea and so they had to wait several hours until a farmer arrived with some heavy equipment and was able to push the car back onto the train. The lady telling the story recalled that as they sat there for hours, waiting for the farmer to arrive, people began complaining about having to just sit there, when someone pointed out that they had been just sitting for hours before, the only difference was now they were not moving. So, to pass the time they continued drinking, and eating, and ended up consuming all the alcohol and food on the train, and because of the long delay, they arrived almost a full day late, hungry, thirsty, and hung-over. Another lady recalled shipping her household goods by train, and because different states in Oz use different guages of rail line, all her breakable items were basically rattled to pieces. Even her bike had broken in two because the metal had rubbed against something and after so long it simply broke through.