Day 41 | Perth: getting a few things done, and off my chest
rest day
OK, I’ve gotta get this off my chest, ie, leaving Perth, last time round.
Departure, D Day, six weeks ago wasn’t the greatest exit from a city I’ve had. Even one where I’ve perched for 13 months.
First incident, a couple of Saturdays before D Day, I discover the truck I’d been driving around in since January hasn’t been registered since, well, since February, please step out of the car as we remove the plates, you’ll have to find your own way home, says a gruff Police sergeant.
Modern technology has dispensed with the need for any windscreen evidence of car registration these days, I had no way of knowing the office accountant had omitted to pay the bill.
Guess I was lucky in some respects, the car and any other occupant had been completely uninsured and any accident, and, you can make up the rest of that story but I have a feeling the cast would include a number of lawyers.
Fearful of how events of this kind seem to arrive in threes I waited until the following Thursday before telling The Boss that sadly tomorrow, Friday, would be my final day, I was heading off on my great expedition.
No worries, you might as well finish up right now then.
Hunh? That’s not the way 8 months of effort is supposed to end, ain’t I supposed to bid farewell to all the blokes I’ve worked with, and finally have a non-teetotalling Friday beer with the team.
Not this time round. Thanks guys, it’s been, err, great, mostly.
Number 3, you were waiting for this one, turned out to be a double whammy.
On the last day in Perth I spent the morning back in the old haunt I’d spent so many hours a year ago in the days of figuring out HTML and website design, ie, the State Library. Mission accomplished I return to the locker area, I have a few things, like lunch, incarcerated and find the combination to the lock, the same 4 digits I’ve used probably close to 200 times fails to open my locker, or indeed any locker, adjacent.
I get the attendant knowing I have only one chance to point out the locker or it’s back at 8pm when the library closes, 6 hours away.
It’s the Koala, I say, the animal sticker on the door to help dimwits remember which locker their junk is in.
It wasn’t.
I head home, it’s my last night and there’s plenty to do, like pack up and clean my room, etc. The Chef has cooked up a treat for the grand finale, a last minute calorie loading, and probably the last time my food will entail lashings of cream for a long while.
Then I set off on Leg One of the 16km return trip for the 8pm Grand Opening. Almost all the lockers are already evacuated, just these two next door to each other at the far end, both Koalas, huddled together in the menagerie of other species of locker doors.
Biking back triumphant, it’s dark, pretty cold and wintery as I roll the bike, slowly, through the pedestrian phase of the traffic lights, comes Part the Second, the, umm, brutal part.
I’m in breach of the law informs a sergeant after following me down the bike path with lights flashing. Running a red light. $150, but no demerit points. I’d prefer the demerit points, I’ve never had any of my own since I started driving decades ago, except the ones I’d acquired, as one does, from my non-law abiding partners, like for running a red light in a car.
Enjoy the rest of your evening says the same sergeant as had picked me up in the car the week before.
There’s now a tale to be told about the fine.
Due to the windy circumstances of the evening, or perhaps the bleakness of my mood, I later found the ticket had vanished.
I had 28 days to pay up so when I was in Albany, a couple of days of the month up my sleeve, I went to the local Police with a fistful of cash. Can’t pay without the ticket, they have no record of the offence. Wait past the 28 days and it will be in The System but it will cost you another $12.50.
The authorities have got the fine evaders sussed here, they just cancel your driver’s licence if you don’t pay after a couple of months. Do I need a licence? Probably not, but eventually they will get the money, plus all the extras, at the border when I try to depart. And who knows, I might find a licence is handy if I get a job somewhere along the way.
So I’m trying, genuinely, to pay up.
The website says you can pay at any WA Magistrates Court so today I have this task to cross off my Perth To Do List, Item 2. There haven’t been too many Magistrate’s Courts out in Pingaring that I noticed.
Sorry hasn’t been entered.
But ain’t this Day 42?
Instead I was advised to go across town to a 1930s building, the Fine Enforcement section at the Police, down squeaky corridors. They located the infringement, on a computer that doesn’t appear to be from this century, but it’s only the original $150 fine which is now past it’s due date, the new fine amount is now in limbo because it hasn’t appeared on The System, I can’t pay it and in any case they can’t accept cash, or even a credit card, they can only take a cheque. (I don’t believe I’ve written a cheque, well, probably since that computer was brand new.) They don’t think it can be paid on the internet yet, maybe in a year.
I realise they haven’t changed The System since the building was constructed.
But now at least I have another copy of the infringement, albeit for the wrong amount.
I’m hoping this isn’t going to turn into another saga like my Australia Post, what State is my parcel in, episodes of a couple of years ago.