The journey began – like all good journeys – in the Downing Centre local court. I had just successfully contested a driving charge (failure to wear a seatbelt) with my friend Jemma (I was the passenger, she was driving).
Some of our evidence hinged on the fact that Jemma was an older P-plater – and therefore less likely to take risks. Jemma was prudent in part because of her age, in part because we had a baby in the car with us, and in part because she’d had intensive driving lessons with a super-instructor called Grace. After we won our case, Jemma turned to me and said: “Promise me you’ll ring Grace. She’s the best and she will be the one to help you get your licence.”
It was enticing. I’d had half a dozen instructors. One of them, who also drove a prison bus, said he felt safer being in a vehicle with murderers than with me. Another abruptly announced her retirement from being a driving instructor 15 minutes into our first lesson.
But Grace … even her name sounded like an answered prayer, like salvation for the unsalvageable, like it should have “amazing” as prefix.
******
I met Grace in Darling Point in Sydney’s east and we started driving around the quiet streets and it was all good and all nice and I could do this – driving around Darling Point in the middle of the day with no one around, until Grace said, “At the bottom of the street, turn left.”
At the bottom of the street was New South Head Road. Four lanes of traffic, all moving so fast that I froze.
“You can do it,” said Grace encouragingly. “You’re a professional driver.” And so I did. I joined the traffic, mysteriously bolstered by her use of the word “professional”. No one had ever called me that before.
I’d also never driven in Sydney, despite having lived in the city on and off since 2001. I knew Sydney as a passenger – but it was a different story as a driver. OMG. Holy hell. I was to discover why Sydney drivers are considered by many to be the worst in the world. They are complete pricks. They don’t just not let you in, they speed up so you can’t get in – for no apparent reason except that they would apparently rather have you die than give you a one-second advantage in the traffic.
But in the eight months of lessons with Grace, I got used to it.
Grace softened it with her endearing habit of saying something gloomy, then ending the sentence with a laugh.
She’d say, “Sydney drivers are terrible, so rude, the eastern suburbs are the worst. Ha ha.”
Or “that driver, in the van, he’s going to kill someone. Ha ha.”
Or “You’re going to hit that Porsche. Ha ha.”
Learning to drive in Sydney’s east was depressing. The roads were full of potholes and Porsches, and people seemed to actively want to kill me and others on the road. I wondered about the relationship of wealth to the impulse to obliterate others (or at least not let them merge) – but Grace, as well as teaching me how to drive, was also teaching me how not to be reactive, to just laugh in the face of death and money.
Around and around we went, practising the test routes for a Bondi Junction exam. But there was a secret I was keeping from Grace that I felt vaguely ashamed of, because it felt like cheating.
I was not going to take the test in Sydney. As a dual resident of Victoria and New South Wales, I was going to take the test in Victoria – in a small place, with nice people (even better, no people) where I might have a better chance of passing.
******
“Don’t do your test in Kyneton,” people would say, but offer only obscure, superstitious opinions when asked why: the streets were too narrow, it rained a lot, there was a mountain nearby that threw a shadow across the town and created bad ju-ju.
I chose Kyneton. My choice was mostly based on population size. It was small, and small meant that I would not be tailgated by a large Range Rover on the Cranbrook drop-off, or almost cleaned up at the lights at Charing Cross by an angry tradie. I’d had only had one lesson before in Kyneton that ended – obscurely – with a homeless woman giving me $50 for more driving lessons. It boded well.
My pal Rick Morton was able to drive me to Kyneton for the test and collect me when it was over. Rick is the sort of friend you want to take you to a big medical appointment or a driving test or to court. He’s bluff and cheery. “It’ll be fine, you’ll smash it,” he said. Ha ha. (He later confessed that he didn’t think I would be successful in getting my licence, and he was preparing to comfort me on the drive back).
The local instructor who accompanied me to the test in her car told me earlier that she would be unable to give me guidance while the test was on, including speaking in pre-agreed “code words”.
The tester got in the car. She seemed nice, professional. Behind the wheel, I pulled up the driveway out of the parking lot, ready to turn on to the road. Showtime. “Turn left,” said the tester. Suddenly panic hit me like a slap. What way was left?? I didn’t know! I couldn’t recall if it was this way or that. Was left towards town or towards the big roundabout? What was left?? This was my fatal flaw, the reason my parents didn’t think I should drive, my secret shame, the thing that had held me back for so long, the problem that I had fought so hard to overcome with Grace and all the driving instructors, over two decades: I didn’t know my left from my right.
“Turn left at the top of the drive.” Left. Left. Time stretched on. I had been in this car forever with these women. We had all grown old in this capsule of steel and plastic. But soon I would have to turn. I would have to take a punt on what way “left” is. Give me a code, I wanted to say but couldn’t. What way is it??
Turn left. Then it kicked in – like a starter motor on a rusty whipper snipper or an old chainsaw. BR….. RRRRRR. RRRRRRRRRRRRR.
I remembered! Indicator ON! Left was left!
I passed in the end. It was almost a perfect test. I was, as Grace would say, “a professional driver”. I just wish she had been there to see it.
