I usually sleep the whole way. Next time may be different because The Boss intends to narrate every lane change — aloud.
The cause of his distress is the grand opening of Melbourne Airport’s multimillion-dollar T123 Transport Hub and Naarm Way project — a marvel of modern engineering designed, by the look of it, by someone who has never tried to extract an anxious spouse, two oversized suitcases and a half-collapsed umbrella from the back of an SUV in sideways rain, while a large retriever picks that exact moment to need a wee.
I know this is serious because The Boss has watched the airport’s new online video so many times I can recite it. The narrator is very calm. The Boss is not.
He has taken notes. There is now a sticky note on the dashboard that reads ‘EXIT 19 – DON’T BE A HERO’. This refers to the new arrangement where drivers peel off the Tullamarine Fwy earlier, at Exit 19 for Naarm Way, instead of coasting down the old terminal driveway. He reckons that has worked perfectly well for 55 years — from the days when the international lounge was a warm spot for plane-watching on a Sunday afternoon.
Miss that exit, The Boss predicts, and you will be taken on an involuntary tour of the airport perimeter roads, ending somewhere near Bendigo with an empty tank and an irate cousin who has missed his plane.
Shepparton folk have it worse. Come in via Donnybrook and Oaklands Rds, as plenty of us do, and you’ll be swept straight past the old car park entry and into a great arc halfway to Geelong, before looping back on to the Tulla to try your luck at Exit 19 like everybody else. What could possibly go wrong?
Then there is the Multi-Storey Question. Drop-offs have moved up to Level 3 behind the Park Royal hotel. Pick-ups are tucked away even further back in the bowels of the old car park, but on Level 2. The Boss has been reciting this in the shower. “Drop-off three, pick-up two. Drop-off three, pick-up two.” I have heard New Boy bark at the gas truck with less conviction.
And heaven forbid you make a tactical error regarding your terminal. Terminal 4 gets to keep its own exclusive set-up, provided you know number four when you see it: choose the wrong lane, and you are trapped in a multi-storey concrete labyrinth like a bewildered lab rat in a physics experiment.
Why is it that whenever humans build a place purely for saying goodbye, they make it as stressful as having your claws clipped?
Dogs manage travel with infinitely more grace. Loaded into the wagon, we accept our fate, turn once or twice on an old blanket, and sleep until someone opens the door.
If you ask me, the engineers behind Naarm Way have misunderstood the emotional architecture of departure. A proper farewell should be swift, faintly melancholy, and smell of wet grass. It should not require a flyover.
To be fair, it may all work beautifully. The video certainly thinks so. And The Boss may well nail it — Exit 19, Level 3, a cheery wave to the hordes of helpers in green fluoro and home by lunch.
Or he’ll take the old driveway out of 55 years of habit, and we’ll spend 40 minutes admiring the outskirts of Sunbury.
Either way, I’ll be asleep well before Donnybrook Rd. Somebody in that car has to know how to enjoy travel. Woof!
