Driving on the Wrong Side

This is my first trip abroad where I’ve rented a car. The distances here are too big and remote for a train, and the areas I’m most interested in seeing are miles from anywhere else. There are only a couple of challenges with driving here: they use kilometers and drive on the left instead of the right. On my Uber ride to the airport to get my rental car, my driver recommended keeping to the speed limit and using cruise control as much as possible. It had also been recommended by someone else that I get a car with lane assistance. These were both extremely helpful bits of advice.

I never really understood how wide a car is until today. That distance between my left hand and the far side of the car felt like it was a good six or more feet away. Nearly everything in the car is reverse from what I’m used to. In my three-and-a-half-hour drive down to Margaret River, I turned on the windshield wipers instead of the turn signal at least a few dozen times. Shifting the car into gear with my left hand felt like my hand was doing something wrong.

The other weird thing here are the speed limits and the distances. A kilometer is less than two-thirds of a mile, which means that speed limits are wildly different. Even the top speed limit here of 110 kph is only around 70 mph. For a country that is so big, it takes a long time to get to places by car. The speed limits also fluctuate wildly, going from 110 to 80 to 70 to 60 and back to 80 and 100 and then 110 before suddenly dropping again. I appreciate the caution, but the variability gets me. At home when driving in the country it is typically a single speed until it drops for a town or construction work. Here it drops every few dozen kilometers.

And then there are the kangaroos. The most common advice I received from locals is that, unless your car has a cattle guard, avoid driving in the country at night. Kangaroos are apparently very dumb and are attracted to car headlights. Hitting one is similar to hitting a moose in North America. These are big animals.