the transition (finally) begins

Today I finally bit the bullet and changed over my driver's licence from Tasmania to Victoria. In fact, I found myself in the temporarily embarrassing position of having my Tasmanian licence expired, and being unable to secure an appointment with VicRoads to effect that changeover until about a fortnight after said expiration.

However, all that is behind me, and I am now the owner of a shiny new, very green Victorian 3-year driver's licence, complete with a photo of me at my Monday morning best (a friend once made the comment about photo IDs of the student card variety that you know you've had a really big night before, if on the morning after, when you look in the mirror you actually resemble the picture on your student card. Whilst my licence photo isn't quite that bad, I'm sure it will still give various friends a certain degree of amusement- if I let them see it :-).

I have to say that I was quite impressed with the efficiency of the Vic Roads system for changing interstate licences over- I was walking out of the building, with the new licence-photo and all- printed out and in my wallet, less than half an hour after my scheduled appointment time. The staff behind the counter were also very friendly and helpful, and the guy who served me also had a rather dry sense of humour, and we had a couple of jokes with his colleague on the next counter.

It's always nice to find some humanity where one expects to find faceless bureaucracy.

I still have to change over the registration of my car, but this will be a more complex process, as I understand my car will need to be inspected, and before that happens there are some minor repairs and servicing that need to be done to ensure it will pass the inspection.