Welcome Home

I’d been back in Oz for about 36 hours. I’d had a lovely dinner with Mum, Dad and my brother and sister and families.

I drove home carefully, still conscious of the fact that I was now on the other side of the road to that which I’d been driving on for the last 3 years. In the main part, it’s not a problem. There was just the one little old lady who gave me a strange look in the carpark as I drove toward her on the wrong side.

So I was just a little surprised that as I pulled off the street upon which the apartment is on and into the carpark, I was followed by the delightful flash of red and blue police lights. I didn’t recall that I had done anything incorrectly on the way home, so waited to find out from the source.

The guy was nice enough and informed me that they had a camera in their car that read number plates and then interfaced with a database that had alerted them to the fact that the vehicle was marked as potentially being driven by someone with an expired license.

Holy crap! Not because my license had expired, because it had … I have a Canadian license that I have to get reverted, but because of the technology. I thought it was damn impressive.

I let the cop know that I did in fact have an expired Australian License and showed him the Canadian one instead. He wished me well and we parted ways. It was an interesting way to learn about expanded Police capabilities.