Kate, Fran and I have been proactive. Our Environmental Policy lecturer told us to visit two particular sites in the city for our project. For a change, we decided to actually do what he asked.
I woke up before 7 AM, drove to the station and took a train to Melbourne Central. The three of us met at the tram stop at 9 AM and congratulated ourselves for being so good. Look how early we are! Look how studious we are! Hooray! We grinned at each other.
“So, where are we going today?”
“What? I don’t know. You have the address.”
“No, I don’t. I gave the sheet to the other group.”
“Well, I don’t have it! I checked!”
“Oh, crap! It was on my sheet! I’m so sorry guys!”
“I didn’t do anything. You two sounded like you knew what you were doing.”
“What are we going to do?!”
We looked helplessly at each other. It was 9 o’clock — not a good time to be calling our fellow classmates, who were very likely sleeping in because our first class was at 6 PM.
We decided to walk down to the Bourke Street Information Centre.
“Excuse me. We’re looking for CERES.”
One of the volunteer Grannies manning the desk furrowed her eyebrows.
“It’s an eco-village somewhere in Brunswick…”
The Granny cocked her head to one side, then hopped on the computer and started tapping furiously. She eventually called up CERES’s address on the internet. Gee, I want to be like her when I’m retired!
We trammed up to CERES and wandered around taking photos. By 11 AM, we were ready to go to the next site. We three YUPPIEs whipped out our phones (a Nokia, a Motorola and a Siemens — who says there’s no diversity?) and started making phone calls to people in our class. Finally, our friend Renee told us that we were to go to Macalister Place in Carlton.
With a great cheer we marched to nearest bottle shop.
“Excuse me sir, do you have a Melway we could use? We’re looking for Macalister Place in Carlton.”
The helpful bottle shop attendant pulled out an ancient Melway from the 1970s. For five minutes we pored over the index, looking for Macalister Place, Carlton. We eventually found it — or rather, we found Macarthur Place, Carlton, which is probably what Renee meant.
Hooray again! We happily sat on the tram, oblivious as we sailed past our stop. When we finally clued in, we got off and re-traced our route by 500 metres.
So, we did eventually get to the places that we were meant to. Not bad for people who didn’t know what they were doing in the morning.