It was a warm spring day here - a balmy 34º - so what better than a day for doing jobs.
Medicare was first on the list, the Australian equivalent of NHS, but unlike in the UK, you have to prove you are entitled to it and be registered before getting treatment. There is a reciprocal agreement with the UK, citizens of both countries having access to the same level of medical care. Even Oz citizens have to prove they have contributed via taxes before getting access to medical care, but its not like the American system though where your medical insurance is scrutinised before you get looked at and as you bleed to death or die of the plague as you wait. Whist I hope not to need it, its good to know that in case of illness of accident, help is available. And the lady was nice too; she broke her ankle on a trip to the Arctic last year, so understood exactly what the concerns were likely to be.
Then we did phones. We now have Aussie mobile numbers which will make things much easier and cheaper.
After that, helmets. Aussie law requires them to be penetration approved and marked accordingly, so we decided to buy them here to comply with the law, plus we didn’t want to drag ours across the States. But just like in the UK, the salesman ( a ginger bloke called Alex) immediately assumed the ‘ you’re women so can’t possibly know anything about riding’ idea, and directed everything towards Gordon. When it became clear that we did, had done it for real quite a bit before, and knew exactly what we needed and why, he switched to giving us advice on Australian seasons, and the need to take water into the Outback. ‘Yeah we know thanks, we’ve ridden in more extreme places than Oz before and know how to look after ourselves. We’ll be fine.’ But your could see in his eyes that the woman bit was really vexing him, so we got him to order the lids and left.
The biggest faff of the day was the bank. We’d opened an account in London with an Aussie bank about six weeks before we left London; all we needed to do was go in, prove our identity, and get our cards. But that didn’t happen. Whilst they had our account and with quite a few grand of our money in it, the cards giving us access to it were nowhere to be found. Bugger. Instead (as requested) of checking with the woman who had been dealing with our account and who was in the bank, the woman with whom we were dealing, cancelled the missing cards and requested they be reissued at the Goulburn branch for pick up next week ( we’ll be down that way but now have to make a special trip to collect them) and tried sending us on our way. However, as we needed still to be set up with on line banking, she called somebody to help us....and that’s when it all came out.
The cards had indeed been issued and were in the personal file of the woman (Joan) whom we had been dealing with on line. But for some reason, Joan hadn’t told anybody nor noted the file, so nobody knew where they were. And because the other woman had blundered ahead and put a stop on them without speaking to Joan as we asked her to, the cards which Joan then produced were useless. What a frigging fiasco. Really frustrating and unprofessional you Commonwealth Bank people of Gosford. Whilst it might not be a big deal to you, you really messed us about and caused us problems. So please sort yourselves out and think about the impact it has on your customers particularly as you have quite a bit of our money in your possession. It’s your job, but if you cant do it, then go and work at Aldi or something. Not impressed.
But the day ended well with a barbie at Nadine’s brother’s - also called Gordon; very confusing.
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